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  • Campus & Community

    Kennedy School establishes overseas program office

    The Overseas Program Office has been established at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government to facilitate the administration of international projects at the School. The Office has primary responsibility for administration and logistics of overseas projects and will work in close collaboration with the research centers and support offices at the Kennedy School. In…

  • Campus & Community

    New Source of Insulin Discovered

    Insulin is like gold to a diabetic, and researchers at Harvard Medical School have found a new way to mine it. The hormone is essential for converting sugar in food into energy; without regular injections of it, people suffering from Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes can lapse into a coma and die. Medical scientists have…

  • Campus & Community

    The hospice journey: Student volunteers, interns take the path to Chilton House

    Harvard Divinity student Alyssa May leaned over Claire’s bed, joking with the older woman about dancing and horseback riding. Claire, looking small and frail under the covers of her high, railed bed, joked back, her soft voice difficult to hear. The two talked for a while, Claire saying how surprised she is at the people…

  • Campus & Community

    Heroes honored

    Harvard honored 220 Central Administration staffers in June, naming them Harvard Heroes for leadership, teamwork, adaptability, and work that exceeds expectations. This year’s Heroes were honored in a June 14 ceremony that was attended by the vice presidents and directors of their departments and by President Neil L. Rudenstine, who read a short note of…

  • Campus & Community

    University’s environmental record lauded

    Harvard has received an award recognizing the excellence of its environmental programs as well as its record of complying with environmental regulations. The award is presented annually by the Environmental Business Council of New England (EBC), a trade association with representation from industry, consulting firms, government agencies, and some universities. “It’s very nice to be…

  • Campus & Community

    The sweet sounds of summer

    As Tom Everett mounts the podium and surveys the room, his commanding presence attracts the gaze of more than 100 attentive and anxious musicians awaiting his direction. It is a summertime Wednesday evening. The setting is the elegant Lowell Lecture Hall, and the players are members of the Harvard Summer School Pops Band. This is…

  • Campus & Community

    Enhanced Sert Gallery opens at Carpenter Center

    The newly renovated Sert Gallery opened last month providing increased gallery space for modern and contemporary art at the Harvard University Art Museums. Sert is the result of collaboration between the Art Museums and the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies (VES). Both the Gallery and VES are adjacent to the Fogg and Busch-Reisinger Museums,…

  • Campus & Community

    Rumors, not roaches, fly, until SPH sets record straight

    Some Boston residents awoke last Thursday to warnings that a particularly vicious African insect had invaded their neighborhoods. Fliers affixed to utility polls and slipped under windshield wipers announced an “Infestation Warning” and featured a large picture of an unsavory-looking bug. And before School of Public Health entomologist Richard Pollack could settle down to work…

  • Campus & Community

    Top profs’ book tips

    What do Harvard professors read over the summer? Are the physicists reading poetry and the literature professors reading algebra? Are they reading at all, or do books lie spine-up on the floor, where their owners last hurled them, while fishing rods and gardening trowels and chopping boards get far more use? We asked a few…

  • Campus & Community

    President Rudenstine appoints outside committee to advise Radcliffe

    President Neil L. Rudenstine announced the appointment of a committee of scholars and academics from outside Radcliffe and Harvard to assist in the process of long-term planning for the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Following is the letter announcing the committee and a listing of its members. July 5, 2000 Dear Members of the Radcliffe…

  • Campus & Community

    Radioactive seeds gain position

    Anthony D’Amico faced a tricky problem. How to place 100 radioactive seeds, each smaller than a rice grain, into tumors inside a walnut-size prostate gland. Properly placed, the seeds destroy cancer cells. Implanting the seeds – called brachytherapy – offers a way to treat early stages of prostate cancer in a way that, for some…

  • Campus & Community

    Search for presidential successor begins

    The Harvard Corporation has announced the start of the search for a successor to President Neil L. Rudenstine, who recently announced his intention to conclude his service at the close of the 2000-01 academic year, after a decade in office. Under the University charter, a new President is elected by the Corporation, with the counsel…

  • Campus & Community

    Police Log

    Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the weeks ending June 17, June 24, July 1, and July 8. The official log is located at Police Headquarters, 29 Garden St. June 11: Several items were reported missing from a room in Mather House. June 12: A bicycle…

  • Campus & Community

    NewsMakers

    Pollution study captures Fisher Prize Diane Hart Barnes, a doctoral candidate in the department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, is the recipient of the Howard T. Fisher Prize in Geographical Information Science (GIS), Harvard University, for the academic year 1999-00. Barnes received the award for her work titled “Urban/Industrial Pollution for the New York City-Washington,…

  • Campus & Community

    Fall memorial planned for Nagatomi

    Masatoshi Nagatomi, professor of Buddhist Studies emeritus in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, died on June 3, 2000. A private funeral service was held on June 17. A fall memorial is being planned. In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that contributions be made to the Buddhist Studies Forum c/o the…

  • Campus & Community

    HMS to explore ‘complementary’ medical practices

    In a move that taps its faculty’s depth and breadth of expertise to expand academic inquiry into complementary medicine, Harvard Medical School (HMS) has established the Division for Research and Education in Complementary and Integrative Medical Therapies. David M. Eisenberg, director of the Center for Alternative Medicine Research and Education at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical…

  • Campus & Community

    Photographer shares his Afghan experiences in two classes

    Edward Grazda has been taking pictures in Afghanistan since 1980, shortly after the Soviets invaded the country. He had been in India, but news of the conflict drew him northward until he found himself in Peshawar, the border town on the Pakistan side of the Khyber pass. It was there that he got to know…

  • Campus & Community

    Test shows those closer to death

    A 15-minute mental test shows promise for identifying people 65 years and older who are most likely to die in the next two years, according to a study at the Harvard School of Public Health. Given on a regular basis, the test reveals deterioration of such cognitive functions as memory and orientation. “Our study shows…

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard has a constructive summer

    The growing season is upon us, and like everything around it, Harvard is going to be getting a bit bigger during the summer months. A variety of projects are on the construction calendar, from new Life Sciences and Business School buildings to a major renovation of University Hall. Many projects were begun immediately after Commencement…

  • Science & Tech

    Fighting prostate cancer with radioactive seeds

    In November 1997, a team of surgeons headed by Anthoy D’Amico, an associate professor of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School, first used a technique that treats early stages of prostate cancer in a way that, for some patients, may be superior to the usual methods of surgical removal of the gland or seven weeks…

  • Health

    Cognitive testing of elderly could help detect medical problems

    Shari Bassuk, research fellow in the Department of Health and Social Behavior at the Harvard School of Public Health, and her colleagues have found that even mild impairments in areas such as memory and orientation were strongly predictive of mortality among people under the age of 80 years old. “There are major implications for these…

  • Health

    Active girls who drink colas are five times more likely to fracture bones

    In a study, more than 460 ninth- and tenth-grade girls reported their activity levels, soda drinking habits, and history of bone fractures. A researcher found that drinking any type of soda was linked to an increased likelihood of having a bone fracture, and that the greatest increases were for those girls who drank cola beverages,…

  • Campus & Community

    Volunteers honored for work in Cambridge schools

    Cambridge School Volunteers, Inc., recently presented the 1999-00 Mack Davis Award to eight volunteers for their outstanding service to Cambridge public schools. The award is named for the late Mack I. Davis II, a Harvard administrator with an “extraordinary record of public service.” The winners and their volunteer placements are (left to right): Jacqueline Cressey,…

  • Campus & Community

    Transforming Boyz II Men

    Presiding over the classroom, Kevin Fuller, Ed.M. ’00, looks like a missionary – a free-spirited, high-stye preacher, dressed in a long, raspberry, collarless jacket, pressed black dress shirt and pants, and polished black shoes. High noon’s sun nudges the window shades at Brighton High School as Fuller rises from behind the teacher’s desk, where he…

  • Campus & Community

    Notes

    Summer School musical opportunities The Harvard Summer School Orchestra will hold auditions for full brass, including both cornets and trumpets, harp, English horn, and piccolo on Tuesday, June 27, through Thursday, June 29, from 6 to 10 p.m. in Lowell Hall, Rooms B13 and B14. Rehearsals will be held on Mondays from July 3 through…

  • Campus & Community

    Memorial Minute — H. Leroy Vail

    Hazen Leroy Vail was born in Boston, August 5, 1940. His father, Hazen Claude Vail, who had left a Depression-broken small farm in Belleisle, New Brunswick, to seek his fortune here, was a Metropolitan Life Insurance Company salesman. Leroy’s mother, Mary Teresa MacLean Vail, come as a girl with her family from Cape Breton Island…

  • Campus & Community

    Walking is step in right direction for reducing stroke risk

    The more physically active women are, the greater they reduce their risk of stroke, according to a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health. The study followed 72,488 nurses for eight years and concluded that the more a woman exercises, the lower the odds she will suffer a stroke. “Previous research demonstrated that…

  • Campus & Community

    Drugs muscle their way into men’s fitness

    Male college students in the United States and Europe want to add more muscle to their bodies because they think that will make them more attractive to females. They are wrong. Asked by researchers to choose bodies they would most like to have, the students picked computer images with 30 pounds more muscle than they…

  • Campus & Community

    Soda pop increases risk of bone breaks

    Add bone fractures to obesity and tooth decay as another reason that teenage girls should drink less soda pop, particularly colas. Ninth- and 10-grade girls who drink soda pop have three times the risk of bone fractures compared with those who don’t drink carbonated beverages, according to a new Harvard study. Worse, the most physically…

  • Campus & Community

    Daniel Schrag Wins MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowship

    Give Daniel Schrag some old seawater, bits of sediment from the ocean floor, and chunks of coral rock, and he’ll tell you about Earth’s climate tens of thousands, even millions of years ago. He’s done this so well that the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced this week it will give him $500,000…