Year: 2009

  • Science & Tech

    Policies regarding IRB members’ industry contacts often lacking

    At a time of heightened concern about conflicts of interest posed by relationships between academic medical researchers and commercial firms, a new study finds that a significant number of academic…

  • Health

    U.S. hospitals slow to adopt electronic health records, citing cost

     There is broad consensus that electronic health records (EHR) have the potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of health care providers. Yet, to date, there has been no reliable…

  • Health

    Blumenthal named national coordinator for health information technology

    The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced today (March 20) the selection of David Blumenthal as the Obama administration’s choice for national coordinator for health information technology. …

  • Health

    Hearing could hold key to unlocking schizophrenia mystery

    Measuring brain waves in response to hearing a variety of tones appears to be a useful way to begin understanding the underlying genetic abnormalities associated with schizophrenia, says a study…

  • Arts & Culture

    OfA, OCS name 2009 Artist Development Fellowships

    The Office for the Arts at Harvard (OfA) and Office of Career Services (OCS) are pleased to announce the 2009 recipients of the Artist Development Fellowship (ADF). This program supports the artistic development of students demonstrating unusual accomplishment and/or evidence of significant artistic promise. The ADF program represents Harvard’s deep commitment to arts practice on…

  • Arts & Culture

    Peabody preserves rare daguerreotypes

    Thirty-six rare daguerreotype portraits from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology have recently been stabilized and preserved for future generations, in collaboration with the Weissman Preservation Center at Harvard University Library and the Mellon Foundation. Until photo conservators got to work, some daguerreotypes were nearly obscured by the deterioration of glass and other components,…

  • Arts & Culture

    Playwright plumbs texts, ancient and modern

    You know Noh, no? Chiori Miyagawa does. The Bard College playwright-in-residence, a Radcliffe Fellow this year, has steeped herself in Noh theater, a measured style of Japanese drama that dates back to the 14th century. It’s one of the many literary echoes — some old, some ancient — that she brings to her work. “I…

  • Nation & World

    Picture this, and you will begin to understand

    It has been almost 20 years since photographer Felice Frankel started working with scientists by helping them illustrate the intricate geometries of physical worlds too tiny to see. From the beginning, she was struck by one thing: To explain their ideas, scientists always start by drawing them. That gave Frankel an idea — “Picturing to…

  • Arts & Culture

    Drawing from history

    History and art are intricately linked in “Wiyohpiyata: Lakota Images of the Contested West,” a new exhibit at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology based on a collection of drawings by Native American warriors. “It’s so rich. It’s such a complex, interesting document that has so many stories embedded in it,” said the show’s…

  • Arts & Culture

    Yu Hua reads work, participates in star-studded panel at Fairbank event

    It’s strange to imagine your dentist as one of the most interesting and controversial novelists of the 21st century. But that’s just what Yu Hua is. Or was — the former dentist who admitted, more frighteningly, that he possessed little formal dental training, recently derided his former profession to a New York Times reporter, saying,…

  • Campus & Community

    Carroll Emory Wood Jr. passes away at the age of 88

    Carroll Emory Wood Jr., a professor of biology and curator of the Arnold Arboretum, passed away at his South End (Boston) home on March 15 at the age of 88.

  • Campus & Community

    Crimson turn on offense vs. Hartford

    There’s something special about the Harvard men’s lacrosse team. The signs are everywhere. There’s the Crimson’s 9-6 upset at Duke — against the country’s No. 5 team, in the season opener — followed by a 12-4 pounding of Stony Brook the next weekend. Then there is the crucial play of freshman attackman Jeff Cohen, who…

  • Campus & Community

    Friedrich named assistant dean for undergrad social planning

    David R. Friedrich, the manager of the Student Organizations Center at Hilles (SOCH), has been appointed assistant dean of Harvard College and director of the Student Activities Office. He will be responsible for working with undergraduate students on developing and implementing extracurricular and social planning. His appointment is effective immediately.

  • Campus & Community

    Higher IQ power strips will save Holyoke energy

    The key to saving electricity is right at your feet — and there’s no need to reach for it. In February, University Information Systems (UIS) technicians installed Smart Strip Power Strips at about 700 workstations in Harvard’s Holyoke Center. When workers there turn off their computers at the end of the day, these floor-level devices…

  • Campus & Community

    Lights will go out as University joins worldwide Earth Hour

    For an hour on the evening of March 28, Harvard will turn the lights off on some of its iconic architectural features — part of Earth Hour 2009, a global event promoting individual action to reduce climate change. From 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., the University will shut off non-essential lights atop Memorial Hall and on…

  • Campus & Community

    University offers staff a bridge to somewhere

    Melani Bizarria cries when she talks about Harvard’s Bridge to Learning and Literacy Program. “I need to say thank you so much for the opportunity,” says Bizarria after a recent English class, her eyes welling up with tears. “I’m trying to do my best, but I don’t have words to explain my feelings. I am…

  • Campus & Community

    Biologist McCarthy nets Scientist of Year Award

    The Harvard Foundation will present the 2009 Scientist of the Year Award to James J. McCarthy, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography and master of Pforzheimer House, at this year’s Annual Albert Einstein Science Conference: “Advancing Minorities and Women in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics.” McCarthy will be honored for his outstanding work in climate science…

  • Science & Tech

    Fijian girls succumb to Western dysmorphia

    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…

  • Health

    Study IDs human genes required for hepatitis C viral replicating

    Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers are investigating a new way to block reproduction of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) — targeting not the virus itself but the human genes the virus exploits in its life cycle. In the March 19 Cell Host & Microbe, they report finding nearly 100 genes that support the replication of…

  • Arts & Culture

    Geospatial Library relaunched

    Following a yearlong process of redesign and testing, the University Library’s Office for Information Systems has relaunched the Harvard Geospatial Library (HGL), the University’s catalog and repository of data for geographic information systems (GIS). The new HGL offers an enhanced user experience through new functionality and a highly intuitive interface.

  • Nation & World

    Panel: Housing crisis is opportunity for action

    When housing prices on Main Street tumbled last year — who doesn’t know this? — tremors rumbled all the way to Wall Street, and beyond. For the first time in 40 years of record-keeping, the median price of a single-family home declined. In six months, the value of U.S. housing stock dropped $3 trillion. Credit…

  • Nation & World

    An attempt to define ‘academic excellence’

    Michèle Lamont, Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and professor of sociology and of African and African American studies, analyzes the system of peer review in her new book “How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment.”

  • Campus & Community

    Nieman recognizes Charlotte Observer with Taylor Family Award

    For its coverage of health and safety violations in the poultry industry “The Cruelest Cuts,” the Charlotte Observer has won the 2008 Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers, and will be presented a $10,000 prize by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard on April 16, 2009.

  • Health

    Training the talent in trouble spots

    The Harvard Initiative for Global Health (HIGH) has begun a fellowship program with the aim of identifying and helping train bright young developing-world health professionals in remote regions of the world with the greatest global health challenges.

  • Campus & Community

    Gwen Ifill of ‘Washington Week’ wins Goldsmith Award

    The winners of the Shorenstein Center’s annual Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism are by definition accomplished. But in listing all the achievements of this year’s recipient, Gwen Ifill, Shorenstein Center director Alex Jones chose to focus on something that is unlikely to find its way onto her resumé.

  • Nation & World

    Harvard conference on gender and law looks at past, present, future

    It was a homecoming of sorts when Ruth Bader Ginsburg, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, spoke at a conference on gender and the law today (March 12) at a conference at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

  • Campus & Community

    Women’s tennis wins 2 of 3

    The Harvard women’s tennis team pulled a pair of wins this past weekend, including a 4-3 upset over No. 68 Boston College on March 13, and then, bouncing back from a 1-6 loss to No. 52 Florida International (March 15), a 6-1 win over Florida Gulf Coast (March 16). The Crimson now stand at 4-6,…

  • Campus & Community

    Crimson continue to cruise, have won 6 of their last 8

    The Harvard men’s volleyball team are now winners of six out of their last eight, sweeping East Stroudsburg on March 14, 3-0, followed by a 3-0 sweep of MIT on March 17. The Crimson downed East Stroudsburg in straight sets (bouncing back from a loss at Princeton the night before) for their first road win…

  • Campus & Community

    Women’s basketball to play in WNIT

    An Ivy League title and automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament were just out of reach for the Crimson this season, but it’s not time for the Harvard women’s basketball team to hang up their jerseys just yet.

  • Campus & Community

    Undergrad grants available through Schlesinger Library

    The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America invites Harvard undergraduates to make use of the library’s collections with competitive awards of up to $2,500 for relevant research projects. Preference will be given to applicants pursuing research in the history of work and the family, community service and volunteerism, culinary…