Featured series 
Year: 2007
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Nation & World
Highlights from 367 years of Harvard presidents
Simple arithmetic supplies one of the most striking facts of Harvard history: since 1640, the institution has had only 27 presidents. The United States – nearly 140 years younger –…
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Nation & World
Harvard Presidential Announcement: Remarks by President-Elect Drew G. Faust
Text as prepared for delivery Seven years ago, when I was named as the first dean of the new Radcliffe Institute, I said I was deeply honored to have been…
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Nation & World
Harvard names Drew G. Faust as its 28th president
Drew G. Faust, an eminent historian and outstanding academic leader who has served since 2001 as the founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, will become the twenty-eighth president of Harvard University, effective July 1.
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Nation & World
Feeling the noise
No matter how fiercely coaches may preach to their players about the virtues of shutting out the noise come game time, the clatter surrounding the annual Beanpot tournament – that madcap midterm examination of Boston collegiate hockey – is tough to shush. What with all the media coverage surrounding the 55-year-old event, together with the…
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Nation & World
Daffodil Days marks 20 years of fighting cancer
Although yellow is not often associated with the drab winter months, Community Affairs has gone a long way in helping to change that perception on Harvard’s campus. This early spring, those efforts reach a milestone as Harvard celebrates two decades as a key participant in the annual Daffodil Days fundraiser.
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Nation & World
HRES proposes 2007-08 rents for Affiliated Housing
Per University policy, Harvard Real Estate Services (HRES) is required to charge market rent for its housing. To establish proposed rents for 2007-08, HRES performed a regression analysis on three years of market rents for more than 4,000 neighboring apartments, all of which were voluntary postings at the Harvard Housing Office by non-Harvard property owners.…
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Nation & World
The philosophy of evolution
For many college students, deciding what subject to major in can be a struggle. But for Peter Godfrey-Smith the decision seemed obvious almost from his first days as an undergraduate at Sydney University in Australia. “I knew when I was a first-year student that I was going to do philosophy,” he said. “There was such…
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Nation & World
University’s ‘what-if’ planning for bird flu in sync with new CDC guidelines
Recently released U.S. government guidelines for combating a potential avian flu pandemic closely resemble response strategies that have been under development by Harvard planners since October 2005. Both the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines – available online at http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/community/community_mitigation.pdf – and Harvard’s ongoing “what-if” planning say that the best protection against a flu pandemic…
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Nation & World
Tony Award winner to impart wisdom
Tony Award winner Michael Cerveris will conduct two workshops for Harvard undergraduate actors and singers performing audition monologues and songs on Feb. 26 at 3 and 7 p.m.
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Nation & World
Symposium: ‘Will brain imaging be lie detector test of the future?’
For almost a century, one of the staples of crime stories has been the wires, cuffs, and jiggling recording needle of the polygraph machine. In its time, the “lie detector” was hailed as a way to measure the telltale physiological signs of deception, including hard breathing, high blood pressure, and excess perspiration. But in truth,…
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Nation & World
The joys and perils of building a superb film archive
When Bette Davis called in sick during her time as a contract player with Warner Bros., the studio was known to send their own physician to her house to make sure she wasn’t malingering. Haden Guest mentions this intriguing fact as one of the many insights into the Hollywood studio system he gained while working…
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Nation & World
Orangutan research yields conservation dividends
The population of the orangutan, one of humankind’s closest animal relatives, has declined with human expansion. The orangutan population declined by 97 percent in the 20th century and over 90 percent of their rainforest habitat has been destroyed. The factors contributing to that decline – illegal logging, conversion of forestland to agriculture, and hunting to…
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Nation & World
Powerful documentary on genocide screened at Kennedy School
Those who loudly refused to let the world turn a blind eye or feign helplessness as genocides ravaged millions of lives this century and last are sometimes dubbed “screamers.” The Harvard community got an earful Monday evening (Feb. 5) from an unlikely quartet of modern screamers – the chart-topping, earsplitting heavy metal band System of…
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Nation & World
This month in Harvard history
Feb. 12, 1974 – The Faculty of Arts and Sciences approves a three-year trial for a new undergraduate honors concentration in the Comparative Study of Religion, limited to 10 students per year.
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Nation & World
Police reports
Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending Feb. 5. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.
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Nation & World
Free rides to blood drive givers
In its efforts to make giving blood as convenient as possible, the Massachusetts General Hospital Blood Donor Center is currently providing free transportation to and from the Harvard campus (or back to anyplace in Boston/Cambridge) for groups of three or more donors.
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Nation & World
World’s largest oil firm chief touts research to make fossil fuels ‘cleaner’
The head of the world’s largest oil company said that renewable sources can’t meet the world’s growing energy needs so research dollars should be aimed at both developing renewable sources and at making fossil fuels cleaner.
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Nation & World
Neighbors Gallery review under way
The Harvard Neighbors Gallery is now accepting portfolio submissions from eligible Harvard-affiliated artists (including current or retired full- or part-time faculty and staff and their spouses/partners). Artists will be selected to show their work during monthlong exhibitions (solo or group shows) between September 2007 and May 2008.
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Nation & World
HMS sponsors information session on grants, fellowships
The Faculty Fellowship Committee at Harvard Medical School (HMS) is sponsoring an information session March 5 from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Waterhouse Room (first floor of Gordon Hall) on the subject of invitational research fellowships and grant opportunities for HMS postdocs and faculty. The meeting will provide information about the Burroughs Wellcome Award,…
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Nation & World
Newsmakers
The works of five Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) professors are featured in the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s National Design Triennial 2006, “Design Life Now.”
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Nation & World
Faculty Council
At its ninth meeting of the year on Feb. 7, the Faculty Council discussed the report of the Task Force on General Education, considered a proposal for a merger between the Standing Committee on Degrees in Literature and the Department of Comparative Literature, and was joined by Thomas Lentz and William Fash for a discussion…
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Nation & World
Current U.S. renewable energy goal too low, says head of national lab
The head of the U.S. government’s renewable energy lab said Monday (Feb. 5) that the federal government is doing “embarrassingly few things” to foster renewable energy, leaving leadership to the states at a time of opportunity to change the nation’s energy future.
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Nation & World
Harold Amos
Harold Amos, scientist, educator, mentor, and avid Francophile, was born in Pennsauken, New Jersey, the second of nine children of Howard R. Amos Sr., who worked in the Philadelphia post office, and his wife Iola Johnson. Iola had been adopted by, and worked for, a prominent Philadelphia Quaker family who home schooled her with their…
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Nation & World
Arctic hit by global warming first
Scientists from the eight nations bordering the Arctic recently enlisted representatives of the region’s native peoples to help assess climate change there. What they found put a human face on a debate often involving distant projections and abstract numbers. Less snow, less sea ice, freezing rain in winter, and the appearance of mosquitoes and robins,…
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Nation & World
Luise Vosgerchian
Luise Vosgerchian, Walter W. Naumburg Professor of Music, Emerita, was born on November 9, 1922 in Watertown, Massachusetts. Her mother Araxy Kurkjian, whose immediate family perished in the Armenian genocide, escaped from Armenia via a long and arduous journey. “Roxy,” who died in 1998 at the age of 102, was both demanding and nurturing, qualities…
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Nation & World
Poor fall behind in birth control
Modern contraception has come a long way in the past 20 years, what with diaphragms, hormones, implants, intrauterine devices, condoms, spermicides, and sterilization. But the boom in birth control has been a bust for the poorest women in the world.
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Nation & World
Spring fellows are welcomed at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center
A former bureau chief for BusinessWeek Magazine and a Chinese scholar researching intellectual property rights are among the fellows and visiting scholars at the Kennedy School of Government’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government (M-RCBG) this spring.