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Science & Tech
Little giants create a big cosmic controversy
A new measuring technique used to determine the distances to a class of stars called “Red Clumps” in the Large Magellanic Cloud produced a much smaller distance than that found…
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Campus & Community
Harvard track defeats Northeastern Huskies
The Harvard men’s and women’s track teams both defeated their Northeastern counterparts at the Gordon Track and Tennis Center Saturday. The women, led by Captain Brenda Taylor with wins in the 60 meter hurdles and 200 meters, beat the Huskies 95-30. Nicky Grant ’02 broke her own school record in the 20-pound weight toss and…
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Science & Tech
Researcher Sunney Xie interested in molecule as an individual
Sunney Xie is one of the world’s leading researchers in molecular imaging and in single-molecule reactions. Xie’s has devised a way to use laser beams to see collections of protein…
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Health
‘Take two aspirin and call me manana’
Harvard Medical School is attempting to bridge the language barriers that sometimes arise in medical settings. A set of three medical phrasebooks was first offered in 1999 in three different…
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Science & Tech
State-of-the-art health guide created
Harvard Medical School believes it has a cure for problems associated with finding accurate, up-to-date medical information: a comprehensive (1,288 pages), $40 medical guide tied to a Web site that…
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Science & Tech
Light weapons are most common in today’s small wars
In the 1990s, approximately 4 million soldiers and civilians were killed by small arms in the internecine conflicts of the developing world. More people, in other words, were killed in…
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Science & Tech
Study finds biotech workers ‘thrive’ on instability
Marked by job insecurity, dependence on changing technology, and uncertain financing, the biotechnology industry is viewed by researchers as one of the best examples of the workplace of the future.…
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Science & Tech
Industrial disasters sparked field of environmental health
Two large, unnatural disasters helped to create the impetus for the field of environmental health to grow in scope. But before there was a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and before…
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Science & Tech
Black silicon: A new way to trap light
Eric Mazur, Harvard College Professor and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics, and his students were studying what kinds of new chemistry can occur when lasers shine on metals, like…
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Science & Tech
New electronic tools reveal forgotten China
German-born photographer Hedda Hammer Morrison (1908-1991) could often be seen bicycling through Peking with a Rolleiflex camera around her neck, capturing her times through her lens as both participant and…
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Science & Tech
21 moons ‘swarm’ planet Uranus
In 1999 three new moons were discovered orbiting Uranus, a great gasball of a planet about 2 billion miles from Earth. The discovery raised the number of Uranian moons to…
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Science & Tech
‘Ultracold’ trap unveils secrets of matter in the universe
Physics Professor John Doyle traps the tiny particles that make up the universe and then studies them, looking for what they can tell him about the most basic rules of…
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Science & Tech
Exploring big and small possibilities of the information revolution
” ‘System-on-a-chip’ is the new buzzword today,” said Professor Woodward Yang in 1999. “It’s really not that far away.” As Yang sees it, the computer revolution is really just beginning.…
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Science & Tech
What killed the dinosaurs?
Charles Marshall’s childhood passion led him to a career in paleontology, trying to understand the interplay between inheritance, environment, and catastrophe in directing evolution. Marshall’s work attracted media attention in…
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Science & Tech
Archaeology team helps find oldest deep-sea shipwrecks
About 2,700 years ago, two Phoenician ships sank to the Mediterranean’s muddy bottom, where they lay upright, preserved in the relative stillness and tremendous pressure of the deep, dark waters.…
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Health
Jolie-Pitt Foundation Donates $2 Million to Global Health Committee to Fight HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis in Ethiopia
The Global Health Committee (GHC) has announced it will receive $2 million dollars from the Jolie-Pitt Foundation to bring life-saving medicines to Ethiopians suffering from HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. The money…
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Science & Tech
El Nino found to be 124,000 years old
Records preserved in corals from Indonesia reveal that El Niño was causing severe weather even before the last ice age began, when the climate apparently was like it was for…
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Campus & Community
Human Biological Clock Set Back an Hour
The internal clock that drives the daily activities of all living things, from wild flowers to whales, is wound by Earth’s rotation. The 24-hour cycle, tied to one turn of…
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Science & Tech
Student-designed lamp brightens Harvard dorms
Halogen lamps became increasingly popular through the ’90s. Their high-wattage bulbs gave off a clear, pleasant light and — at $15 to $25 — even a student could afford them.…
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Campus & Community
Growth Factor Raises Cancer Risk
High levels of a well-known growth factor significantly increase the risks of colorectal, breast, and prostate cancer, medical researchers have found. At the same time, they determined that a protein…
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Science & Tech
Harvard students uncover Martha’s Vineyard history
Some significant details emerged from the items uncovered by Harvard archaeology students at a dig on Martha’s Vineyard in 1999. For instance, the site has been used by humans much…
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Health
Paying attention to attention: How active is hyperactive?
McLean Hospital researcher Martin Teicher and his team believe that the surest way to separate youngsters who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) from those with other problems is to…
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Health
Diving into the gene pool
Maryellen Ruvolo, professor of anthropology, specializes in the analysis of human and primate family trees using DNA data, a subfield of molecular evolution. She is probably best known for her…
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Science & Tech
Discovering a new earthquake fault under Los Angeles
“Los Angeles is caught in a vise,” says John Shaw, an associate professor of structural and economic geology at Harvard who was half of a research team that discovered a…
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Science & Tech
Physicists Slow Speed of Light
Light, which normally travels the 240,000 miles from the Moon to Earth in less than two seconds, has been slowed to the speed of a minivan in rush-hour traffic —…
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Campus & Community
Two Harvard Scientists Win National Medal of Science
The National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor in the United States, has been awarded to George Whitesides, Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry, and William Julius Wilson, Lewis F. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor.
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Campus & Community
Exercise Can Reduce Stroke Risk, Study Says
Here’s a research finding that should bring you to your feet. A brisk, hour-long walk, five days a week, can cut your risk of having a stroke almost in half.…
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Campus & Community
Amartya K. Sen Wins 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics
Sen, Lamont University Professor Emeritus and a current adjunct and visiting professor at Harvard, was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics Wednesday “for his contributions to welfare economics.” He is Harvard’s 37th Nobel laureate.