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Arts & Culture
Heaney ‘catches the heart off guard’
Over the years, readings by poet Seamus Heaney have been so wildly popular that his fans are called “Heaneyboppers.” A reading this week at Sanders Theatre, sponsored by Harvard’s Department of English and American Literature and Language, was no exception. The event’s free tickets were gone weeks ago, within hours, and on Tuesday (Sept. 30)…
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
Oct. 17, 1640 — The Great and General Court grants Harvard the revenues of the Boston-Charlestown ferry, which plies the shortest route between Boston and Charlestown, Cambridge, Watertown, Medford, and the plantations of Middlesex County. (From Charlestown, travelers could head for Connecticut.)
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Campus & Community
Dental School’s Goldhaber dies at 84
Paul W. Goldhaber, dean of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM) for 22 years, died this past July 14 from complications of pancreatic cancer. He was 84.
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Health
New approach to gene therapy may shrink brain tumors, prevent their spread
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers are investigating a new approach to gene therapy for brain tumors — delivering a cancer-fighting gene to normal brain tissue around the tumor to keep it from spreading. An animal study described in the journal Molecular Therapy, the first study to test the feasibility of such an approach, found that…
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Campus & Community
Incoming HSPH dean receives Clinton Global Citizen Award
Julio Frenk, who will become dean of the Harvard School of Public Health in January 2009, has received a Clinton Global Citizen Award. In naming Frenk, along with four other individuals, former President William J. Clinton said, “The Global Citizen Awards are about honoring and inspiring service to humanity. Our award recipients were chosen from…
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Campus & Community
HSPH expands HIV/AIDS work in Tanzania
Nearly 150 years ago, the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam was known by another name — Mzizima, meaning “healthy town” in the local language. But over the decades, the city and the country of Tanzania have experienced mounting challenges to that health.
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Nation & World
Quinn talks to students of various faiths
If she can help it, Washington Post journalist Sally Quinn prefers to avoid the phrase “spiritual journey.” Quinn, who co-moderates the blog “On Faith” with Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, finds the words overused. But she is quick to acknowledge that people’s relationship to faith can change over time — and having interviewed hundreds of scholars,…
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Campus & Community
Lab aims to advance innovations in public education
A new education research and development laboratory at Harvard University will identify and advance strategies to improve student achievement in America’s public schools, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation announced Sept. 25 at the Clinton Global Initiative.
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Nation & World
Experts attempt to parse the ‘crisis in the markets’
“We’ve been in a slow-motion train wreck … and now it’s just a train wreck.” This quip, by Jay Light, Dwight P. Robinson Jr. Professor of Business Administration and dean of Harvard Business School (HBS), was one of the observations offered at a panel discussion Sept. 25 intended to explain the Wall Street financial crisis…
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Arts & Culture
Professionals step lively in dance class
Light footfalls and nervous laughter broke the pre-class silence in the Harvard Dance Studio last Tuesday (Sept. 23). Five students faced the mirror, carefully working through the dance steps to “One,” the finale from the Broadway hit “A Chorus Line.”
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Campus & Community
Translating the color code
From snail shells to bird feathers to the changing skin of a chameleon, nature uses colors in ways that range from the electric blue of a poison dart frog’s warning to the invisible ultraviolet patterns of flowers that call bees to pollinate. The development, use, and perception of color is the subject of a new…
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Campus & Community
Broad Institute gets major grant for epigenomics research
Researchers at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT announced Sept. 30 that they have received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to map the epigenomes of a variety of medically important cell types, including human embryonic stem cells.
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Arts & Culture
Picture Perfect
We live in a world flooded with images. There has been an explosion of cell phone cameras, social networking sites, digital photography, blogs, and surveillance cameras, and we have a 24-hour news cycle that feeds on pictures.
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Campus & Community
AARP names Harvard a top employer for mature workers
Harvard University has been named one of the best employers in the nation for workers age 50 and over by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). Joining first-place selection Cornell, Harvard — which was ranked 34th — was one of only two Ivy League schools to be named to the list by AARP.
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Campus & Community
Study abroad students have lots to say, in lots of languages
Every fall, Harvard Yard comes alive with conversation as students greet old friends and recount how they spent the summer break. This year, with nearly 300 students participating in study abroad programs run by the Harvard Summer School, these encounters likely featured more foreign phrases and more exotic locales than in days past.
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Health
The pine beetle’s tale
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have discovered how beetles and bacteria form a symbiotic and mutualistic relationship — one that ultimately results in the…
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Science & Tech
Harvard Forest:
Harvard may be rooted in Cambridge, but it has a lot more roots in the small north-central Massachusetts town of Petersham. That’s where you’ll find the woods, streams, and fields…
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Science & Tech
Global warming threatens his nation’s existence, a president warns
During a talk at Harvard, the leader of the South Pacific island nation of Kiribati laid out an extraordinary plan that would scatter his people through the nations of the…
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Health
Incoming School of Public Health Dean Julio Frenk Receives Clinton Global Citizen Award
Julio Frenk, who will become Dean of Harvard School of Public Health in January, 2009, has received a Clinton Global Citizen Award. In naming Frenk, along with four other individuals,…
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Campus & Community
Anne Alonso
At the time of her death in August of 2007, Anne Alonso was widely held to be a leading teacher and practitioner of psychodynamic therapy of her day.
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Health
HMS/MGH’s Bruce Walker presents update on vaccine progress
Bruce Walker recalls sitting across from a person long-infected with HIV who never took antiretroviral drugs and never developed AIDS. Walker remembers thinking that the person’s body held a secret of which even they were unaware: how to stop the global AIDS pandemic.
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Arts & Culture
New Trajectories: contemporary architecture in Croatia and Slovenia
For young architects, the moment their country is dissolving may not be a bad time to launch their careers. That has to be one of the takeaway messages from “New Trajectories: Contemporary Architecture in Croatia and Slovenia,” an exhibition at the Gund Hall Gallery of the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) through Oct. 5.
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Campus & Community
Soccer proves to be rust-proof
Coming off a six-day break from soccer, the Harvard men’s foot club handed regional rival University of New Hampshire (UNH) a 3-1 defeat this past Tuesday afternoon (Sept. 23) to wreck the Wildcats’ unbeaten run. With the win, the Crimson squad picks up its third victory out of five outings in the early going of…
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Campus & Community
Mooney, Howe named associate deans at SEAS
Frans Spaepen, interim dean at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and John C. and Helen F. Franklin Professor of Applied Physics, recently appointed bioengineers David Mooney and Rob Howe as associate deans in SEAS.
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Campus & Community
Pardis Sabeti awarded Packard Fellowship
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation has recently awarded Pardis Sabeti, an assistant professor in the Center for Systems Biology at Harvard University, its Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. The $875,000 fellowship will be paid over five years beginning in November. As one of 20 Packard Fellows selected, Sabeti will be invited to an…
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Campus & Community
RiverSing rings in autumn
Fall was grandly ushered in by local residents on Sunday (Sept. 21) with RiverSing, a unique arts festival along the Charles River in Boston and Cambridge.
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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 Sept. 22. 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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Campus & Community
Ouellette named administrative dean at Radcliffe
Helen T. Ouellette has been appointed the administrative dean at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, effective Sept. 22. With a distinguished career in administration, Ouellette’s leadership in higher education includes chief financial roles at Williams College and the New England Conservatory. At Radcliffe, she will succeed Louise Richardson (who was appointed principal and vice…
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Campus & Community
NIH selects nine Pioneers, Innovators from Harvard
Nine Harvard faculty members are among 47 scientists nationally whose promising and innovative work was recognized Monday (Sept. 22) with the announcement of two grant programs through the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
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Campus & Community
And quiet flows the Don at Pusey
The Harvard Map Collection presents its fall exhibition, “From the Amazon to the Volga: The Cartographic Representation of Rivers,” which opened Wednesday (Sept. 24). For centuries, cartographers have wrestled with the difficulties of depicting rivers, and in the process they have devised many ingenious ways of answering the challenge — from streambed profiles to bird’s-eye…