Featured series 
All articles
-
Campus & Community
Howell Jackson named as prospective acting dean of Harvard Law School
Howell Jackson has agreed to serve as the acting dean of Harvard Law School (HLS), subject to the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of Dean Elena Kagan’s nomination to serve as U.S. Solicitor General, President Drew Faust announced today. Jackson, the James S. Reid Jr. Professor of Law, served as the School’s vice dean for budget from…
-
Campus & Community
Financial aid leads to a record applicant pool at Harvard College
More than 29,000 students have applied to Harvard for entrance next September, exceeding last year’s record of 27,462 and the previous record of 22,955, set the year before. In the face of an unprecedented economic downturn, financial aid has proven to be a crucial element in encouraging so many students to apply.
-
Arts & Culture
‘Nation-shaking’ racial, ethnic changes
Real earthquakes are slow to build and fast to erupt. Other, metaphorical, quakes, can follow the same pattern — and be just as earthshaking.
-
Campus & Community
Not the same old Crimson
By the spring of 2007, change was inevitable for the Harvard men’s basketball team. After posting five straight losing seasons — one of which was the worst in program history (4-23 in the 2003-04 season) — it was time for a fresh start.
-
Health
The Improvising Brain
What’s involved when a musician sits down at the piano and plays flurries of notes in a free fall, without a score, without knowing much about what will happen moment…
-
Health
Scientists uncover new class of mammalian genes with key functions
A research team at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has uncovered a vast new class of previously unrecognized mammalian genes that do…
-
Health
Stem Cell Research: The Quest Resumes
“After eight years of political ostracism, stem-cell scientists like Harvard’s Douglas Melton are coming back into the light — and making discoveries that may soon bring lifesaving breakthroughs. Scientific inspiration…
-
Science & Tech
The genes in your congeniality:
Can’t help being the life of the party? Maybe you were just born that way. Researchers at Harvard and the University of California, San Diego, have found that our place…
-
Science & Tech
Implants mimic infection to rally immune system against tumors
Harvard bioengineers have shown that small plastic disks impregnated with tumor-specific antigens and implanted under the skin can reprogram the mammalian immune system to attack tumors. The research — which…
-
Science & Tech
Hotter seasons coming earlier, research finds
An analysis of global temperatures between 1850 and 2007 has illuminated some climate change details, showing that winter temperatures have risen more rapidly than summer temperatures and that the seasons…
-
Health
Topical treatment wipes out herpes with RNAi
Harvard Medical School researchers have succeeded in developing a topical treatment that, in mice, wipes out herpes virus, one of the most intractable sexually transmitted human diseases. Judy Lieberman, professor…
-
Science & Tech
Transit search finds super-Neptune
Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics havediscovered a planet somewhat larger and more massive than Neptuneorbiting a star 120 light-years from Earth. While Neptune has a diameter3.8 times that…
-
Science & Tech
Researchers find new molecule to block ‘Hedgehog’ signaling in cancer, development
Researchers have achieved a feat drug developers had thought difficult, if not impossible, discovering a compound that blocks the functioning of a key developmental protein by binding to an “undruggable”…
-
Campus & Community
Harvard infuses local economy with talent, dollars
Amid a steady stream of dire economic news, new research released Thursday, Jan. 15, shows that Harvard University continues to be a strong stabilizing force for the local economy.
-
Science & Tech
Inmates suffer from chronic illness, poor access to health care
The nation’s prison and jail inmate population struggles with high rates of serious illness and poor access to care, according to the first nationwide study of inmate health and health…
-
Health
Surgical safety checklist drops deaths and complications by more than one-third
A group of hospitals in eight cities around the globe has successfully demonstrated that the use of a simple surgical checklist during major operations can lower the incidence of deaths…
-
Health
Spinal tap unnecessary for most babies with uncomplicated febrile seizures
When babies develop a fever high or abrupt enough to cause a seizure, frightened parents often rush them to the emergency room, where their workup frequently includes a lumbar puncture…
-
Science & Tech
Researchers control the assembly of nanobristles into helical clusters
From the structure of DNA to nautical rope to distant spiral galaxies, helical forms are as useful as they are abundant in nature and manufacturing alike. Researchers at Harvard’s School…
-
Science & Tech
Researchers see exotic force for first time
For the first time, researchers have measured a long-theorized force that operates at distances so tiny they’re measured in billionths of a meter, which may have important applications in nanotechnology…
-
Health
Obesity: Reviving the promise of leptin
The discovery more than a decade ago of leptin, an appetite-suppressing hormone secreted by fat tissue, generated headlines and great hopes for an effective treatment for obesity. But hopes dimmed…
-
Science & Tech
Milky Way bigger, faster than previously thought
Our own Milky Way galaxy, long considered a “little sister” to the larger Andromeda Galaxy, is all grown-up, according to new research presented today that shows the Milky Way to be bigger and faster than previously thought.
-
Health
Antacid medication in pregnancy may increase childhood asthma
Children of mothers who took acid-suppressive drugs during pregnancy had a 1.5 times higher incidence of asthma when compared with children who were not exposed to the drugs in utero,…
-
Science & Tech
New visualization techniques yield star formation insights
New computer visualization technology developed by the Harvard Initiative in Innovative Computing has helped astrophysicists understand that gravity plays a larger role than previously thought in deep space’s vast, star-forming…
-
Science & Tech
John P. Holdren named President-elect Obama’s Science Advisor
President-elect Barack Obama today announced that he has selected Harvard’s John P. Holdren to serve as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology in the new administration. The post,…