In 1982, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Anne E. Becker was still an undergraduate at Radcliffe when she traveled to Fiji for a summer of anthropology fieldwork. What struck her about this South Pacific island nation — and has in many research trips since — was “the absolute preoccupation with food and eating,” she said. “Family and social life really revolve around food. … It’s all about food, all the time.”
Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), Boston Medical Center, Harvard University, and Cambridge Health Alliance found that more than 75 percent of emergency responder candidates for fire and…
Want to know what will make you happy? Then ask a total stranger — or so says a new study from Harvard University, which shows that another person’s experience is…
Barbara J. Grosz, Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University,…
In a new study of terminally ill cancer patients, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found that those who draw on religion to cope with their illness are more likely to…
Inviting a new generation of scientists into the study of human development, disease, and aging, Harvard University will offer a new undergraduate concentration in Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology (HDRB) starting this fall.
Cherry A. Murray, who has led some of the nation’s most brilliant scientists and engineers as an executive at Bell Laboratories and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has been appointed dean of Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), effective July 1, 2009. She will also become the John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
The Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School (HMS) will present Queen Noor of Jordan and actor Edward Norton with the 2009 Global Environmental Citizen Award. The award, given annually, was developed to recognize those individuals who have been world leaders in protecting the global environment. The award will be presented to Noor and Norton on Sunday (March 15) in New York City.
With literally tens of billions of dollars in federal research funding suddenly available — and application deadlines for proposals extraordinarily short — Harvard’s Provost’s Office has established a new web…
Oohs and ahhs greeted slide after slide as English author and freelance scholar Paul G. Bahn presented “The Shock of the Old: New Discoveries in Ice Age Art” at the Yenching Institute Feb 26.
Earlier this year, Big Coal got its say in “The Future of Energy” lecture series sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment. Now it’s time to hear from Big Wind.
David Charbonneau, the 34-year-old Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Astronomy, has been named the recipient of the National Science Foundation’s 2009 Alan T. Waterman Award, and will receive $500,000…
Harvard researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and colleagues have identified the potential cause of the increased risk for cardiovascular and metabolic disease in shift workers. The researchers found…
A newly empaneled committee is about to begin an intensive review of University-wide conflict of interest (COI) “principles, policies and recommendations.” The committee, under the direction of David Korn, vice…
Harvard President Drew Faust today renewed the University’s commitment to the vision of advancing interdisciplinary, collaborative science in general, and the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology (SCRB), the…
Two miles below the surface of the Sargasso Sea lies a depression in the Earth’s crust filled with sediment and, scientists believe, teeming with life — exotic, microscopic, and very…
Our own Milky Way galaxy, long considered a “little sister” to the larger Andromeda Galaxy, is all grown-up, according to new research. The findings, presented at a Jan. 5 meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, Calif., by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) researchers, show that the galaxy has about 50 percent more mass — about the same as Andromeda — and is rotating about 100,000 mph faster than previously thought.
Watch your footing on those slippery winter sidewalks in Cambridge. But if you’re at the corner of Dunster and Mt. Auburn streets, take a minute to look up.
For the first time, researchers have measured a long-theorized force that operates at distances so tiny they’re measured in billionths of a meter, which may have important applications in nanotechnology as scientists and engineers seek new ways to create devices too small for the eye to see.
The leader of one of the nation’s largest coal mining companies said Tuesday (Feb. 3) that coal is a vital part of the nation’s energy mix and that clean coal technology must be developed if the atmosphere is to stop warming.
Can’t help being the life of the party? Maybe you were just born that way. Researchers have found that our place in a social network is influenced in part by our genes.
An analysis of global temperatures between 1850 and 2007 has illuminated some climate change details, showing that winter temperatures have risen more rapidly than summer temperatures and that the seasons are coming nearly two days earlier than they were 50 years ago.
Once a day, Miaki Ishii rides the Earth tide, rising slowly — along with her desk, chair, and entire office — 20 to 30 centimeters before sinking back again.
Can’t help being the life of the party? Maybe you were just born that way. Researchers at Harvard and the University of California, San Diego, have found that our place…
Harvard bioengineers have shown that small plastic disks impregnated with tumor-specific antigens and implanted under the skin can reprogram the mammalian immune system to attack tumors. The research — which…
An analysis of global temperatures between 1850 and 2007 has illuminated some climate change details, showing that winter temperatures have risen more rapidly than summer temperatures and that the seasons…
Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics havediscovered a planet somewhat larger and more massive than Neptuneorbiting a star 120 light-years from Earth. While Neptune has a diameter3.8 times that…
Researchers have achieved a feat drug developers had thought difficult, if not impossible, discovering a compound that blocks the functioning of a key developmental protein by binding to an “undruggable”…
The nation’s prison and jail inmate population struggles with high rates of serious illness and poor access to care, according to the first nationwide study of inmate health and health…