Featured series 
Month: October 2008
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Campus & Community
Harvard, MIT, Yale presses join forces to help rebuild Iraqi National Library
Last week, more than 5,700 books were shipped from TriLiteral, the warehouse that holds inventory for Harvard University Press, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Press, and Yale University Press, to help replenish the Iraqi National Library. The three presses have partnered with the Sabre Foundation, whose book donation program has a long history of…
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Health
Financial risk-taking behavior is associated with higher testosterone
Higher levels of testosterone are correlated with financial risk-taking behavior, according to a new study in which men’s testosterone levels were assessed before participation in an investment game. The findings help to shed light on the evolutionary function and biological origins of risk taking.
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Campus & Community
Theme of Ig Nobels: Redundancy redundancy
The 18th First Annual Ig Nobel winners will be showered with applause and paper airplanes at Sanders Theatre on Thursday (Oct. 2). Traveling from four continents, the 10 award recipients will be honored for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.”
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Health
Advance in pluripotent cell creation
A team of Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) scientists has taken an important step toward producing induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that are safe to transplant into patients to treat diseases. Excitement over the ability of researchers to create this form of stem cell by inserting four genes into adult cells has thus far been…
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Arts & Culture
Heaney ‘catches the heart off guard’
Over the years, readings by poet Seamus Heaney have been so wildly popular that his fans are called “Heaneyboppers.” A reading this week at Sanders Theatre, sponsored by Harvard’s Department of English and American Literature and Language, was no exception. The event’s free tickets were gone weeks ago, within hours, and on Tuesday (Sept. 30)…
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
Oct. 17, 1640 — The Great and General Court grants Harvard the revenues of the Boston-Charlestown ferry, which plies the shortest route between Boston and Charlestown, Cambridge, Watertown, Medford, and the plantations of Middlesex County. (From Charlestown, travelers could head for Connecticut.)
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Campus & Community
Dental School’s Goldhaber dies at 84
Paul W. Goldhaber, dean of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM) for 22 years, died this past July 14 from complications of pancreatic cancer. He was 84.
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Health
New approach to gene therapy may shrink brain tumors, prevent their spread
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers are investigating a new approach to gene therapy for brain tumors — delivering a cancer-fighting gene to normal brain tissue around the tumor to keep it from spreading. An animal study described in the journal Molecular Therapy, the first study to test the feasibility of such an approach, found that…
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Campus & Community
Incoming HSPH dean receives Clinton Global Citizen Award
Julio Frenk, who will become dean of the Harvard School of Public Health in January 2009, has received a Clinton Global Citizen Award. In naming Frenk, along with four other individuals, former President William J. Clinton said, “The Global Citizen Awards are about honoring and inspiring service to humanity. Our award recipients were chosen from…
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Campus & Community
HSPH expands HIV/AIDS work in Tanzania
Nearly 150 years ago, the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam was known by another name — Mzizima, meaning “healthy town” in the local language. But over the decades, the city and the country of Tanzania have experienced mounting challenges to that health.
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Nation & World
Quinn talks to students of various faiths
If she can help it, Washington Post journalist Sally Quinn prefers to avoid the phrase “spiritual journey.” Quinn, who co-moderates the blog “On Faith” with Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, finds the words overused. But she is quick to acknowledge that people’s relationship to faith can change over time — and having interviewed hundreds of scholars,…
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Campus & Community
Lab aims to advance innovations in public education
A new education research and development laboratory at Harvard University will identify and advance strategies to improve student achievement in America’s public schools, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation announced Sept. 25 at the Clinton Global Initiative.
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Nation & World
Experts attempt to parse the ‘crisis in the markets’
“We’ve been in a slow-motion train wreck … and now it’s just a train wreck.” This quip, by Jay Light, Dwight P. Robinson Jr. Professor of Business Administration and dean of Harvard Business School (HBS), was one of the observations offered at a panel discussion Sept. 25 intended to explain the Wall Street financial crisis…
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Arts & Culture
Professionals step lively in dance class
Light footfalls and nervous laughter broke the pre-class silence in the Harvard Dance Studio last Tuesday (Sept. 23). Five students faced the mirror, carefully working through the dance steps to “One,” the finale from the Broadway hit “A Chorus Line.”
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Campus & Community
Translating the color code
From snail shells to bird feathers to the changing skin of a chameleon, nature uses colors in ways that range from the electric blue of a poison dart frog’s warning to the invisible ultraviolet patterns of flowers that call bees to pollinate. The development, use, and perception of color is the subject of a new…
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Campus & Community
Broad Institute gets major grant for epigenomics research
Researchers at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT announced Sept. 30 that they have received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to map the epigenomes of a variety of medically important cell types, including human embryonic stem cells.
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Arts & Culture
Picture Perfect
We live in a world flooded with images. There has been an explosion of cell phone cameras, social networking sites, digital photography, blogs, and surveillance cameras, and we have a 24-hour news cycle that feeds on pictures.
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Campus & Community
AARP names Harvard a top employer for mature workers
Harvard University has been named one of the best employers in the nation for workers age 50 and over by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). Joining first-place selection Cornell, Harvard — which was ranked 34th — was one of only two Ivy League schools to be named to the list by AARP.
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Campus & Community
Study abroad students have lots to say, in lots of languages
Every fall, Harvard Yard comes alive with conversation as students greet old friends and recount how they spent the summer break. This year, with nearly 300 students participating in study abroad programs run by the Harvard Summer School, these encounters likely featured more foreign phrases and more exotic locales than in days past.
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Health
The pine beetle’s tale
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have discovered how beetles and bacteria form a symbiotic and mutualistic relationship — one that ultimately results in the…