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Campus & Community
A record pool leads to a record-low admissions rate
A record applicant pool of 27,462 has led to an admission rate of 7.1 percent, the lowest in the history of Harvard College. Traditional admission letters (and e-mails) were sent on March 31 to 1,948 students. Last year 2,058 applicants were admitted from a pool of 22,955.
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Health
Newly discovered class of mouse retinal cells detect upward motion
Harvard researchers have discovered a previously unknown type of retinal cell that plays an exclusive and unusual role in mice: detecting upward motion. The cells reflect their function in the…
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Campus & Community
Jane Mendillo to lead Harvard Management Company
Jane Mendillo will become the new president and chief executive officer of Harvard Management Company (HMC), effective July 1, 2008, the HMC board of directors announced today.
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Science & Tech
Common aquatic animals show extreme resistance to radiation
Harvard scientists have found that a common class of freshwater invertebrate animals called bdelloid rotifers are extraordinarily resistant to ionizing radiation, surviving and continuing to reproduce after doses of gamma…
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Nation & World
Web of care
Lake Peligre fills the valley floor, its dark blue waters a relief to the eye after hours winding through central Haiti’s hot, treeless hills on the dusty, potholed road that passes for National Route 3.
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Science & Tech
Harvard Medical School to reduce student debt burden
Harvard Medical School (HMS) Dean Jeffrey Flier today announced that the school is taking steps to reduce the cost of a four-year medical education by an average of $50,000 for…
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Nation & World
Public interest lawyers come home to HLS
Last weekend (March 13-15), current and future lawyers at Harvard Law School (HLS) discussed how to change the world. The first “Celebration of Public Interest” at HLS brought together hundreds of the School’s alumni involved in public service careers to discuss their work, share their stories, and engage with the next generation of lawyers considering…
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Arts & Culture
Symposium held on ‘Olympic’ architecture
The Olympics are never just about sport. This summer’s Beijing Olympics have been emphatically about architecture, too. In preparation for the games this August, the Chinese capital is undergoing an urban transformation unprecedented in recent history.
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Health
Satcher’s goal: To help ‘people who have been left out’
David Satcher — the 16th U.S. surgeon general and co-author of “Multicultural Medicine and Health Disparities” (McGraw-Hill, 2006), was in Boston (March 13) to deliver the fourth in a 2007-08 series of lectures in Public Health Practice and Leadership sponsored by the HSPH’s Division of Health Practice.
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Arts & Culture
Arts In brief
A.R.T. PRODUCTION UP FOR TOP AWARD LOCKWOOD, JUILLIARD STRING QUARTET TO EXPLORE BEETHOVEN
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Arts & Culture
The story behind ‘Storied Walls’
In March 2001, Bill Saturno, a newly minted Harvard Ph.D., was in Guatemala searching for recently uncovered hieroglyphics as a research associate of the Peabody Museum. It turned out that his guides were overbooked and his planned expedition had to be canceled. As a sort of consolation prize, the company offered Saturno a three-hour Land…
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Campus & Community
RMJM gift supports integrated design program at GSD
Despite the current building boom, many recent graduates from architecture and engineering schools are choosing to pursue more lucrative careers in high-tech and management consulting, rather than building and design. This trend, according to design professionals, could have major consequences for the construction industry. As part of an effort to address it, a recent $1.5…
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Arts & Culture
Panel discusses paucity of designing women
Women in Design, a student group at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) that aims to increase the visibility of women in the field, kicked off its four-part spring symposium, “Progress in Process,” Thursday night (March 13) with a panel discussion on where women in architecture are now and where they are headed. Department…
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Arts & Culture
With old forms, improvisation, Bielawa creates ingenious anachronism
Manhattan composer Lisa Bielawa is a Radcliffe Fellow this year. Her tiny studio on Concord Avenue is spartan: white walls, a piano, a violin, two chairs, a table strewn with music staff paper. On one side is the glow of a computer. On the other is a single window, with a blur of trees beyond.…
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
March 13, 1944 — Between matinees at Boston’s RKO Theatre, composer-pianist Duke Ellington visits Paine Hall to give a 20-minute lecture on the blues (“Negro Music in America”). At the keyboard, Ellington illustrates his talk with “Sophisticated Lady,” “Subtle Slough,” “Dancers in Love,” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” and “Mood Indigo.”
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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 3. 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
Sharma to attend Clinton’s Global Initiative University
Ankush Sharma, a graduate student in the Health Careers Program at Harvard University, attended the inaugural Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) conference at Tulane University March 14-16.
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Campus & Community
Shapiro selected as 2008 Young Global Leader
The World Economic Forum recently named Daniel L. Shapiro a 2008 Young Global Leader. The director of the Harvard International Negotiation Initiative and a lecturer on law, Shapiro joins leaders across a wide range of fields who are under 40 years of age to be chosen to pursue solutions to global-scale issues including education, government,…
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Campus & Community
Commencement information
Commencement information for the Tercentenary Theatre event.
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Campus & Community
Bowen, 54, was Straus Center’s deputy director
Craigen Weston Bowen, deputy director of the Straus Center for Conservation at Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum and an accomplished rock climber and gardener, died at her home in Lexington, Mass., on March 1, 16 months after being diagnosed with cancer. She was 54.
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Campus & Community
Sports in brief
SAILING TAKES FOURTH AT CENTRAL SERIES ONE TRIO OF HAT TRICKS OUT-TRICK QUINNIPIAC CRIMSON FENCERS CLINCH SIXTH PLACE AT CHAMPS
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Campus & Community
Crimson Frozen Four-bound
With the Harvard women’s hockey team protecting a 5-1 advantage in the closing minutes of its NCAA regional showdown versus Dartmouth on Saturday afternoon (March 15), a small contingent of Crimson fans suddenly filled Bright Hockey Center with a battle cry. “Min-ah-so-ta” they sang, followed by a rhythmic succession of hand claps (two slow, three…
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Campus & Community
Harvard graduate student takes good cause and good friend on the road
What’s a 15-year-old boy, confined to a wheelchair with a fatal form of muscular dystrophy, to do on his summer vacation? Take a 7,000-mile road trip across the country with 11 friends. So thought Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) student Logan Smalley Ed.M. ’08, who organized the trek and then captured it in his…
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Arts & Culture
Conference brings out pacific potential of African hip-hop
Harvard and hip-hop. One is the famous university, the other the music style marked by rapping, rhyming, and a synthetic backbeat. Both begin with the letter “h.” Nothing else in common, right? Wrong. Harvard last week (March 13-15) hosted a three-day conference on African hip-hop, a musical style that experts say not only makes audiences…
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Campus & Community
John Harvard Book Project wraps up at local schools
In October 2007, a group of Harvard College students proposed a novel way to commemorate the 400th anniversary of John Harvard’s birth — donate books. Their initial idea developed into the John Harvard Book Project, which ran from November through February and raised funds from students, faculty, and staff with the goal of purchasing books…
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Health
Link between deep sleep and visual learning
A relationship has been observed between deep sleep and the ability of the brain to learn specific tasks. Researchers at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have now shown that the processes that regulates deep sleep may affect visual learning. These results are published in the March 12 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.
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Health
Study shows indicator for cardiovascular events
A study appearing in this week’s (March 19) New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) confirms that a combination of gene variants previously associated with cholesterol levels does reflect patients’ cholesterol levels and can signify increased risk of heart attack, stroke, or sudden cardiac death. Led by researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) cardiology division,…
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Health
MGH initiates Phase I of its diabetes trial
Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have initiated a Phase I clinical trial to reverse type 1 diabetes. The trial is exploring whether the promising results from the laboratory of Denise Faustman can be applied in human diabetes.
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Health
Study: Know thyself and you’ll know others better
Using functional MRI (fMRI) scanning, researchers have found that the region of the brain associated with introspective thought “lights up” when people infer the thoughts of others like themselves. However, this is not the case when we’re considering people we think of as different politically, socially, or religiously. Published in the current issue of the…