Featured series 
Year: 2009
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Campus & Community
Police reports
Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending April 6. 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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Health
Waist size predictor of heart failure in men and women
Adding to the growing evidence that a person’s waist size is an important indicator of heart health, a study led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has found that larger waist circumference is associated with increased risk of heart failure in middle-aged and older populations of men and women.
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Campus & Community
Hammonds, Smith announce College will be closed during mid-year break
In an e-mail sent Monday (April 6) to Harvard students, faculty, and staff, Harvard College Dean Evelynn Hammonds and Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith announced that Harvard College will be closed during the 2009-2010 mid-year break, between the end of exams in December and the first day of classes in January.
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Health
Simple bedside test improves diagnosis of chronic back pain
A simple and inexpensive method of assessing pain, developed by Harvard researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), is better than currently used techniques for distinguishing neuropathic pain – pain caused…
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Health
Lighting up Parkinson’s disease research
Most people do not think of jellyfish at the mention of Parkinson’s disease research. But, at the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease (MIND), researchers Pamela McLean and Bradley Hyman are…
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Campus & Community
Faculty Council
At its ninth meeting of the year on March 18, the Faculty Council was briefed by the Dean of the College on House renewal and on the review of the Undergraduate Council. The Council also considered a proposal to change the name of the Standing Committee on Ethnic Studies.
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Campus & Community
‘Apples’ bear fruit
I once heard a story about service from a Focolarino, a member of the Focolare, a Catholic movement dedicated to Love of Neighbor. One day, the Focolarino was helping a poor man pick apples that he could sell to support his family. After he drove the man home, the Focolarino was surprised to find the…
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Campus & Community
Not Cancun, just can do
When I and 11 fellow Harvard students drove into Money, Miss., last week searching for the site of Emmett Till’s murder, we were expecting to find something to mark the event credited with igniting the Civil Rights Movement. Instead there was nothing.
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Campus & Community
Service and Civil Rights
Harvard students spend Spring Break helping others and learning lessons along the Tallahatchie River.
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Campus & Community
Samuel P. Huntington service set
A memorial service for Samuel P. Huntington, who was the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard, will be held on April 22 at 3 p.m. in the Memorial Church in Harvard Yard. Huntington, a longtime Harvard University professor, an enormously influential political scientist, and a mentor to a generation of scholars in widely…
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Arts & Culture
Creativity through cerebration
Contemporary composer Kay Rhie hasn’t had many watershed musical moments. The romantic ideal of a composer “deeply entrenched in creative epiphanies,” she admitted on a recent damp spring afternoon, is “not my story.”
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Arts & Culture
Atkins, Dennehy to perform poems of T.S. Eliot
In the first lines of “The Waste Land,” a touchstone of modernist poetry from 1922, T.S. Eliot offers an ambiguous view of the very month we are in: April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.
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Campus & Community
Unleashed pets barred from Yard
Effective April 1, unleashed pets will no longer be allowed in Harvard Yard. All pets, with the exception of service animals, must be on a leash at all times. This policy is designed to ensure the safety of residents, staff, and visitors. This policy will be strictly enforced in the Yard by the Harvard University…
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Campus & Community
Harvard begins process for reaccreditation by NEASC
This year, Harvard University is preparing for its fall 2009 reaccreditation by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC). Harvard, like all accredited universities and colleges, is reviewed for reaccreditation approximately every 10 years.
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Campus & Community
Catalog, handbooks, Q Guide go online only
In a plan designed to eliminate waste, provide more options for faculty, students, and staff, and to reduce costs, the “Courses of Instruction,” “Harvard College Handbook for Students,” “The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Handbook for Students,” and “Q Guide and Information for Faculty Offering Instruction in Arts and Sciences” will be available online…
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Campus & Community
Lowe appointed executive director of HUNAP
Shelly C. Lowe has been named the new executive director of Harvard University’s Native American Program (HUNAP). The appointment becomes effective this July.
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Campus & Community
Howard Koh tapped for assistant secretary for health
President Barack Obama announced March 25 his intent to nominate Howard Koh, the Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), to be assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
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Campus & Community
Blumenthal is national coordinator for health information technology
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced March 20 the selection of David Blumenthal as the Obama administration’s choice for national coordinator for health information technology.
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Campus & Community
Crimson hold off the Bulldog’s fight
There’s no stopping them, and there’s no containing them. It’s too bad the team from Connecticut wasn’t forewarned.
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Campus & Community
Report on Harvard House Renewal released
On Wednesday (April 1) Harvard College Dean Evelynn Hammonds announced the release of the “Report on Harvard House Renewal” in an e-mail to the Harvard residential community. The report is a synthesis of the findings of the House Program Planning Committee, a group charged by Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith with…
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Campus & Community
Going South for service and civil rights
Experience the stirring sights and plangent sounds of a singular Spring Break, during which Harvard students worked to renovate Katrina-ravaged houses, tutored children in afterschool programs, and met — and sang with — pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement, like Hollis Watkins (harmonizing, above from left with students Diane Ghogomu ’10 and Sumorwuo Zaza ’11).
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Health
Skin biology illuminates how stem cells operate
As a girl, Elaine Fuchs borrowed her mother’s old strainers and mixing bowls to collect polliwogs, an activity she credits for her present-day career as a biologist.
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Health
Urban areas offer hidden biodiversity
Urban areas around the world are places of hidden biodiversity that need to be protected and encouraged through smart urban design, said an authority in green city design.
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Health
Study: Key to happiness is listen to others
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 often more informative than your own best guess.
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Campus & Community
Harvard Catalyst grants encourage greater faculty collaboration
Scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics are measuring how patients’ posture affects MRI imaging of their breathing.
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Health
Development of ‘the pill’ examined
The birth control pill, which revolutionized contraception and sparked a cultural reassessment of the purpose of sex and the sanctity of life, was developed by a Harvard fertility doctor who believed people should have children early in life — and as many as they could afford.
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Science & Tech
A mother’s criticism strikes nerve
Formerly depressed women show patterns of brain activity when they are criticized by their mothers that are distinctly different from the patterns shown by never-depressed controls, according to a new study from Harvard University. The participants reported being completely well and fully recovered, yet their neural activity resembled that which has been observed in depressed…
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Health
Five named Early Career Scientists
Five Harvard researchers are among 50 young scientists nationwide who will have their work supported for the next six years by a new initiative from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).
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Nation & World
Experts get down to business at 2009 Humanitarian Action Summit
In December 2000, Dorothy Sewe and her family — fleeing tribal violence in Kenya — escaped across the border into Tanzania. In the first few days, all 17 huddled under plastic bags in the pouring rain. They camped outside the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, begging for help.