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Campus & Community
Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies awards prizes
The Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Kodansha Publishers hosted the 13th annual Edwin O. Reischauer/Kodansha Ltd. Commemorative Symposium and the 12th annual awarding of the Noma-Reischauer Prizes in Japanese Studies on Oct. 19. These prizes are given annually by Kodansha Publishers for the best essays written by Harvard University students on Japan-related topics. The…
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Science & Tech
The cultural politics of pain, from Percodan to Kevorkian
On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, physicians, historians of science, and members of the general public gathered in the Gymnasium at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study to hear about pain. Keith Wailoo, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of History and founding director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity at Rutgers University, began a lecture…
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Science & Tech
Foraging for forest frogs
In the dark of the Sri Lankan cloud forest, the researchers’ only guides were the headlamps they used to light up the night, illuminating the cold, gray mist that drifted through the trees. They looked carefully as they walked among the trunks, the beams from their headlamps casting left and right, up and down. They…
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Science & Tech
Engineered weathering process might mitigate climate change
Researchers at Harvard University and Penn State University have invented a technology, inspired by nature, to reduce the accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by human emissions. By electrochemically removing hydrochloric acid from the ocean and then neutralizing the acid by reaction with silicate (volcanic) rocks, the researchers say they can accelerate natural chemical…
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Science & Tech
Harvard, Japanese science organization sign memorandum of understanding
Officials of Harvard and RIKEN, Japan’s equivalent of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Lanoratories have October 29 signed a Memorandum of Understanding to encourage and facilitate collaborations between Harvard and RIKEN researchers. Michael D. Smith, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Venkstesh Narayanamurti, Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences,…
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Health
Study examines substance abuse prevalence among teens receiving routine medical care
Approximately 15 percent of middle and upper middle class teens receiving routine outpatient medical care in a New England primary care network had positive results on a substance abuse questionnaire, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a journal published by the American Medical Association. “According to…
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Health
Flier hails new, cooperative era in Harvard science
Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier Friday evening issued a call for new approaches to advance the fight against disease, embracing cross-institutional collaborations at Harvard as a way to bring new thinking to old problems. Flier, the keynote speaker at the Fourth Annual Tony and Shelly Malkin Stem Cell Symposium at the Harvard Club of…
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Health
Study paints genetic portrait of lung cancer
An international team of scientists today announced the results of a systematic effort to map the genetic changes underlying lung cancer, the world’s leading cause of cancer deaths. Appearing in the November 4 advance online issue of the journal Nature, the research provides a comprehensive view of the abnormal genetic landscape in lung cancer cells,…
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Health
Researchers track down rheumatoid arthritis gene
Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have discovered a gene involved in rheumatoid arthritis, a painful autoimmune disease that affects 2.1 million Americans and can destroy cartilage and bone within the afflicted joint. In a study led by Robert Plenge, an instructor in medicine at Harvard…
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Health
Changes in diet and lifestyle may help prevent infertility
Women who followed a combination of five or more lifestyle factors, including changing specific aspects of their diets, experienced more than 80 percent less relative risk of infertility due to ovulatory disorders compared to women who engaged in none of the factors.
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Campus & Community
Statistics captures unpredictability of real world
Harvard’s small but active statistics department celebrated its 50th anniversary last week. There were two days of lectures and panels Oct. 26-27 at the Gutman Conference Center, and a noisy, social, and musical banquet at the Harvard Club of Boston.
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Health
Scientists image vivid ‘brainbows’
By activating multiple fluorescent proteins in neurons, neuroscientists at Harvard University are imaging the brain and nervous system as never before, rendering these cells in a riotous spray of colors dubbed a “Brainbow.”
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Health
AAAS selects four faculty members as fellows
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recently awarded the distinction of fellow to four Harvard faculty members. In all, 471 new members were named for their efforts toward advancing science applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished.
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Nation & World
Sovereignty vs. global responsibility
As part of Harvard Business School’s International Week, an annual event to highlight the cultural diversity at the School, Srgjan Kerim, president of the 62nd session of the United Nations General Assembly, delivered the keynote address at the Spangler Auditorium on Oct. 25.
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Health
1.8 million veterans lack health coverage
Of the 47 million uninsured Americans, one in every eight (12.2 percent) is a veteran or member of a veteran’s household, according to a study by physicians from Cambridge Health Alliance who are also Harvard Medical School researchers. The study is published in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health. Approximately 1.8…
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Health
Med students don’t study war, ethics
A new survey of U.S. medical students shows they receive little training about what they should or should not do in wartime, despite ethical questions over physician involvement in prisoner interrogation and a legal framework making a “doctor draft” possible.
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Campus & Community
Faust, Pilbeam greet freshman parents
To an assemblage of 1,000 freshman parents on Oct. 26 in Sanders Theatre, Dean of Harvard College David R. Pilbeam offered a welcome. “Your freshman is already a member of the extended Harvard family.”
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Nation & World
KSG panel: Early campaigning takes voter toll
The intense media coverage of a small group of presidential hopefuls is prematurely narrowing the field of worthy nominees, many political experts claim.
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Nation & World
Dowd works the crowd at White Lecture
Journalism, the saying goes, is the first draft of history.
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Nation & World
Looking at China’s role in Africa
China’s increasing influence in Africa is a double-edged sword that wields the potential for prosperity and despair.
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Arts & Culture
Rehding finds ‘monumental’ works key to German political history
In December 1989, a few weeks after the reunification of Germany, Leonard Bernstein ’39 raised his baton above the ruins of the Berlin Wall and conducted a special arrangement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The central statement of the work — “all men will be brothers” — captured the sentiment of those who saw a brighter…
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Arts & Culture
Taxonomist Carl Linnaeus on show at HMNH
Carl Linnaeus believed that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was not an apple but a banana. He came to this conclusion in 1737, while studying plant specimens at Hartecamp, the estate of George Clifford, a wealthy Dutch banker and director of the Dutch East India Company. Clifford collected exotic plants from around the…
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Arts & Culture
Tale of John Harvard’s surviving book
This November, Harvard University will mark the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Harvard, not the institution’s founder as he is sometimes credited, but rather its first major benefactor. Such a noteworthy anniversary warrants reflection, although, unfortunately, a great many details about both the history of John Harvard and the legacy of his library…
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Arts & Culture
Darnton looks at the ‘art and politics of libel’ in 18th century France
Government censors in pre-Revolutionary France were so hypervigilant that under their watchful eyes no one with anything significant to say dared publish their works in their own country. The solution was to publish abroad and smuggle the contraband books into France where they were soon snapped up by eager readers.
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
Nov. 6, 1770 — Rumblings of Revolution: Joseph Avery, Class of 1771, orates on “Oppression and Tyranny” before the Speaking Club.