A group of 25 Harvard students is reaching far beyond the boundaries of Harvards Cambridge campus – into developing nations to lend a hand to microfinance organizations seeking to help low-income residents pull themselves out of poverty.
Thick-skinned bottle gourds widely used as containers by prehistoric peoples were likely brought to the Americas some 10,000 years ago by individuals who arrived from Asia, according to a new genetic comparison of modern bottle gourds with gourds found at archaeological sites in the Western Hemisphere. The finding solves a longstanding archaeological enigma by explaining how a domesticated variant of a species native to Africa ended up millennia ago in places as far removed as modern-day Florida, Kentucky, Mexico, and Peru.
The Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics recently announced that Harvard College students are eligible to apply for a Lester Kissel Grant in Practical Ethics to support research and writing that makes contributions to the understanding of practical ethics. A number of grants will be awarded on a competitive basis for projects to be conducted during the summer of 2006. The projects may involve research for senior theses, case studies for use in courses, essays or articles for publication, or similar scholarly endeavors that explore issues in practical ethics.
Researchers at Harvard University have demonstrated that gas bubbles can exist in stable non-spherical shapes without the application of external force. The micron- to millimeter-scale peapod-, doughnut-, and sausage-shaped bubbles,…
After three weeks in a tiny tunnel 50 feet below an ancient Maya pyramid in the Guatemalan jungle, Peabody Museum researcher Bill Saturno finally got to view his prize. Fine…
The second in a series of gatherings described by Michael Sandel as “conversations that transcend the areas that we normally populate” was a far cry from the first such conversation,…
A new type of treatment has been found to protect mice against a nasty strain of herpes virus common in humans. Because this genital virus is an important co-factor for…
Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM) researcher Martin Nweeia has just answered a marine science question that had eluded the scientific community for hundreds of years: why does the narwhal, or unicorn, whale have an 8-foot-long tooth emerging from its head, and what is its function? Nweeia, a clinical instructor in restorative dentistry and biomaterials sciences at HSDM, will be presenting his conclusions at the 16th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in San Diego.
The 2005 Annual Report of the Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (CCSR), a subcommittee of the President and Fellows, is now available upon request from the Office for the Committees on Shareholder Responsibility. Please call (617) 495-0985 to request copies.
Math homework is not one of 10-year-old Aubrey Cappuccis favorite things, but at The East End House after-school program in her East Cambridge neighborhood, shes found a way to learn about math and love it – through games.
The day before she visited Harvard, Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, was criticized by the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton. Arbour had just issued a statement on terrorists and torturers, in which she said that the absolute ban on torture, a cornerstone of the international human rights edifice, is under attack. The principle once believed to be unassailable … is becoming a casualty of the so-called war on terror. To which Bolton responded that it was inappropriate and illegitimate for an international civil servant to second-guess the conduct that were engaged in in the war on terror. The next day, Dec. 8, Arbour visited the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) to have an informal, public conversation with Michael Ignatieff, Carr Professor of Human Rights Practice.
From the perspective of Harvards 369-year history, the gates in and around the campus are a relatively new phenomenon. For more than two-thirds of its existence, Harvard had nothing more to guard its perimeter than a low post-and-beam fence. When the Johnston Gate – the initial component of the present-day enclosure – went up in 1889, many decried its towering piers and elaborate ironwork as a pretentious imposition on the schools austere Puritan heritage. But as time went on and succeeding Harvard classes raised generous sums to extend the fence and punctuate it with stately apertures, the structure grew to be as familiar and beloved as any of the schools more venerable monuments.
The 50th anniversary conference of the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research took place over three days (Dec. 9-11), attracting hundreds of scholars from around the world, who gathered to hear and participate in panels on Chinas domestic politics, international relations, economy, social conditions, literature, and philosophical traditions.
Patricia A. King, the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Medicine, Ethics and Public Policy at Georgetown Law Center, has been elected to become the newest member of the Harvard Corporation, the University announced Sunday (Dec. 4).
This stained glass window at Memorial Hall reminds the viewer of a time when the word ‘awesome’ referred to something that filled one with reverence, wonder, and awe.
Although there have not yet been any reports anywhere of human-to-human transmission of avian influenza, administrators from across the University gathered at Maxwell-Dworkin on Monday (Dec. 5) for a two-hour presentation by the Universitys Incident Support Team (IST) to further planning for dealing with a possible pandemic of the bird flu.
Dec. 29, 1627 – John Harvard enters Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, England. Dec. 20, 1672 – Leonard Hoar, Class of 1650, is formally installed as Harvard’s third President and the…
Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department for the week ending Dec. 5. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.
A weeklong stay in a French villa, lunch with the lieutenant governor, a tour of the San Francisco mayors office, and four tickets to a Chicago Cubs baseball game are among the items up for bid at the 20th annual Student Internship Fund (SIF) auction at Harvards Kennedy School of Government (KSG). The auction will be held today (Dec. 8) at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, 79 JFK St. The silent auction will begin at 5:30 p.m. with the live auction starting at 7 p.m.
At a party hosted by President Lawrence H. Summers at his Elmwood Avenue home, he talks to some of his 80 guests – students studying at Harvard University after their schools were closed because of Hurricane Katrina.
Belva Brown Jordan has a passion for Volkswagen Beetles. It all started about 15 years ago: I was sitting on an airplane one day, said Jordan, and I opened up one of those airplane magazines where you can order stuff and there was this picture of a Franklin Mint Volkswagen Beetle, a classic Beetle, and I thought, Wow, look at that, thats really cool! She ordered the car and, when it arrived, she said it felt like Christmas or her birthday.
Two fellows at Harvard Law Schools Berkman Center for Internet and Society – Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman – were recently awarded Best Journalistic Blog in English by Deutsche Welle for Global Voices Online, the nonprofit media project they co-founded and run (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/). The award recognizes the tremendous contribution made to citizens media in the past year.
The Fairbank Center for East Asian Research will celebrate its 50th anniversary with a three-day conference at the Center for Government and International Studies (CGIS), South Building (1730 Cambridge St.), Dec. 9-11. The conference, titled Studying Modern China: Past, Present, and Future, will feature distinguished scholars from Harvard and other institutions in academic panels and roundtable discussions on topics ranging from the evolution of the field of Chinese studies, to Chinas economy, literature, and philosophy.
Two juniors awarded Tazuko Ajiro Monane Prize Harvard College junior Nitipat Pholchai and senior Carly Cohen have recently been named co-recipients of the 2005-06 Tazuko Ajiro Monane Prize. Given annually,…
PBH gift drive under way Through Dec. 15, the Phillips Brooks House (PBH) will be accepting donations for its annual holiday gift drive. Members of the Harvard community are invited…
In honor of the 80th birthday of Higgins Professor of Biochemistry Jack Strominger, Harvards Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology is holding a major scientific symposium this Saturday (Dec. 10) at the New Research Building Conference Center (77 Ave. Louis Pasteur, Boston).
Speed beat out size in a big way this past Saturday (Dec. 3) at Lavietes Pavilion, as the visiting Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) mens basketball team served Harvard hoops its first setback of the season by a tally of 87-79. The loss snapped a five-game win streak for the Crimson club, who were off to their best start since the 1997-98 campaign.
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