The Harvard Gazette

Year: 2010

Page 1 of 52

Previous studies found that children of women who took vitamin D supplements during pregnancy were less likely to develop wheezing during childhood. The current study was designed to examine the relationship between the actual blood levels of vitamin D of newborns and the risk of respiratory infection, wheezing and asthma.

Newborns need for vitamin D

Low levels may increase risk for respiratory infections

Health|

DateDecember 27, 2010

Researchers from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital compared four measures of hospital-wide mortality provided by commercial vendors. "The results should not be interpreted as an indictment of any particular technique,” said Sharon-Lise T. Normand, HMS professor of health care policy. “Rather, they call into question the concept of measurement of hospital-wide mortality, as four different methods yielded four different results. Thus, this may not be a good way to assess hospital quality.”

Mixed messages

Mortality rates are an unreliable metric for assessing hospital quality

Health|

DateDecember 22, 2010March 6, 2019

“We told the patients that they didn’t have to even believe in the placebo effect. Just take the pills,” says HMS Associate Professor of Medicine Ted Kaptchuk. By the end of the trial, nearly twice as many patients treated with the placebo reported adequate symptom relief as compared with the control group.

Placebos work — even without deception

Twice as many patients reported adequate symptom relief

Health|

DateDecember 22, 2010March 15, 2019

Harvard hosts high schoolers for International Economic Summit

News +|

DateDecember 22, 2010April 2, 2019

Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.: "This was truly one of the greatest honors of my career, and I am deeply grateful to my colleagues at the Beijing Foreign Studies University both for the conference in my honor and for overseeing the publication of my work into Chinese."

Chinese scholars celebrate Gates

Conference honors scholar's work on African-American literature

Campus|

DateDecember 22, 2010March 15, 2019

Africa's savanna elephant (shown) is as different from Africa's forest elephant as Asian elephants are to mammoths, says a new study in PLoS Biology.

Seeing double

New study shows Africa has two elephant species ... and why that matters

Health|

DateDecember 21, 2010March 6, 2019

Treating depression in HIV+ patients improves treatment adherence, viral outcome

News +|

DateDecember 21, 2010July 24, 2019

ES 51 drives home the principles of engineering design

News +|

DateDecember 21, 2010March 15, 2019

Harvard psychology graduate student Laura Germine has published a paper showing that our ability to recognize faces does not peak until we are in our 30s. “Research on cognition has tended to focus on development, to age 20, and aging, after age 55,” Germine said. “Our work shows that the 35 years in between, previously thought to be fairly static, may in fact be more dynamic than many scientists had expected.”

The face looks familiar

Study says ability to recognize others peaks shortly after age 30

Health|

DateDecember 21, 2010March 6, 2019

Guest speaker Howard Stone (right) demonstrates a standing wave during a lecture titled “Good Vibrations: How We Communicate,” which was hosted by Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Waves and the waggle dance

SEAS talk entices children into world of physics, biology

Campus|

DateDecember 21, 2010March 6, 2019

Helen Shenton has been named the first executive director of the new Harvard Library. Shenton was involved with the restructuring and transformation of the British Library, one of the world's largest and most comprehensive research collections.

Library Board names executive director

Helen Shenton will manage the University’s new library system

News|

DateDecember 20, 2010

While health experts generally advise reducing full-fat dairy products, a compound found in dairy fat may substantially reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. The compound, trans-palmitoleic acid, is a fatty acid found in milk, cheese, yogurt, and butter. It is not produced by the body and thus only comes from the diet.

Dairy fat may help not harm

Compound in dairy may substantially reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes

Health|

DateDecember 20, 2010March 6, 2019

“We have seen juveniles occasionally carrying sticks for many years, and because they sometimes treated them rather like dolls, we wanted to know if in general this behavior tended to represent something like playing with dolls,” said Professor Richard W. Wrangham.

Female chimps treat sticks as dolls

Growing evidence for gender-specific play in humans

Health|

DateDecember 20, 2010March 6, 2019

Sodium intake in the U.S. adult population

News +|

DateDecember 20, 2010April 30, 2019

Bill Keller, executive editor at The New York Times, told an audience at the Nieman Foundation that now more than ever traditional journalists have an important role to play in publishing government data in an effective and responsible way. The question of which government activities should be kept from the public, he said, “has blossomed into one of the most urgent political debates of our time, joining the question of how we protect ourselves to the question of what it is exactly that we are protecting.”

Working with WikiLeaks

Times editor examines secrecy, reporting in free-for-all Internet age

World|

DateDecember 20, 2010April 22, 2019

Stephan Wolohojian, the Landon and Lavinia Clay Curator and head of the division of European and American Art at the Harvard Art Museums, discussed the Barberini Faun plaster model at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. All the evidence points to the Harvard model being “a working model,” said Wolohojian, and not a cast for reproduction. It was the kind of working object made of clay, rope, and other handy material that “rarely survived in a chaotic sculptor’s studio,” he said. “This plaster is a rare and precious survivor.”

Art in the making

Model of ancient Barberini Faun ‘a rare and precious survivor’

Arts|

DateDecember 20, 2010March 6, 2019

December Green Tip: Turn off before you take off

News +|

DateDecember 20, 2010March 6, 2019

President Faust’s statement on DADT

News|

DateDecember 18, 2010

“It’s going to get grim really fast,” warned Walter Johnson, Harvard’s Winthrop Professor of History and professor of African and African-American studies, early in his talk at Radcliffe. Using the words of former slaves and slaveholders, Johnson painted a harsh and violent picture of the pre-Civil War Mississippi Valley region.

The landscape of slavery

Unsettling accounts of those in Southern bondage echo across time

Arts|

DateDecember 17, 2010March 6, 2019

Naoshige Uchida (above), an associate professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard, tracked the effects of single sniffs in an area of the brain called the olfactory bulb. What makes the study unique is the fact that Uchida and graduate student Kevin Cury conducted the research on awake, moving animals.

The nose knows

Microbiologists link odor-related neural action and behavior

Health|

DateDecember 17, 2010March 15, 2019

"I am happy that our Native American students are pleased with the portrait, and have requested that it be hung in Annenberg Hall so that future classes of Harvard students will be made aware of the Native American presence at Harvard since its creation,” said S. Allen Counter (right), director of the Harvard Foundation.

Native American honored

Harvard Foundation unveils portrait of first Native American grad

Campus|

DateDecember 17, 2010July 18, 2019

At a Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies' lecture, activist and publisher Bao Pu addresses the recent events surrounding the awarding of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Communist Party critic Liu Xiaobo. The backlash against Liu, Bao said, is based on the “myth” that China is at ideological odds with the West. While China has embraced liberal economic reforms, the ruling Communist Party has not tolerated Liu’s outspoken support for Western democratic values.

Quashing a voice, attacking a Nobel

Human rights advocate discusses China’s reaction to Peace Prize choice

World|

DateDecember 17, 2010April 12, 2019

SEAS 2009-10 annual report is now online

News +|

DateDecember 16, 2010March 15, 2019

Crisis in primary care

News +|

DateDecember 16, 2010March 6, 2019

Researchers have been tracking the frequency with which words appear in books, allowing scholars the ability to more precisely quantify a wide variety of cultural and historical trends. Leading the four-year effort are Harvard's Jean-Baptiste Michel (foreground), a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology and Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, and Erez Lieberman Aiden, a junior fellow in Harvard’s Society of Fellows.

Oh, the humanity

Harvard, Google researchers use digitized books as a ‘cultural genome’

Science|

DateDecember 16, 2010September 12, 2019

Paul Farmer (center) has been named a University Professor, Harvard’s highest distinction for a faculty member. “Paul Farmer is best known to the public as a pioneering humanitarian,” President Drew Faust said in announcing the appointment. “But among scholars he is equally well-known for his research and writing, which have crossed boundaries between the social sciences and biomedical research and married theory and practice to forge a new approach to global health."

Paul Farmer appointed University Professor

Harvard bestows top faculty honor on humanitarian leader, scholar

News|

DateDecember 16, 2010July 8, 2019

With the band

Arts|

DateDecember 16, 2010February 6, 2018

By the numbers

Science|

DateDecember 16, 2010April 22, 2019

“I wanted the audience to know that they are entering into a different universe,” said one of the show’s writers and producers, Ruth Bauer, of the installation that has transformed the center’s hallway and lobby into a mini modern museum.

Students go Dada over project

Their creations grace Loeb lobby as backdrop to ‘Blue Flower’

Arts|

DateDecember 16, 2010March 6, 2019

“It’s probably one of the biggest experiments in lifestyle ever conducted in the history of man,” said Associate Professor of Epidemiology Michelle Holmes, with research partner Hans-Olav Adami, Epidemiology Department chair.

Sick to death

Organizers of sweeping study seek to understand Africa’s chronic ailments

Health|

DateDecember 16, 2010

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