Featured series 
Year: 2012
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Science & Tech
Nanoparticles shine with customizable color
Engineers at Harvard have demonstrated a new kind of tunable color filter that uses optical nanoantennas to obtain precise control of color output. The advance has the potential for application in televisions and biological imaging, and could even be used to create invisible security tags to mark currency.
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Arts & Culture
Rousseau occupies Houghton
On the tricentennial celebration of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s birth, the author and philosopher is being honored with an exhibition of his works at the Houghton Library. “Rousseau and Human Rights” continues through March 23.
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Campus & Community
Historian’s book a prize finalist
Professor Maya Jasanoff is one of three finalists for the $50,000 George Washington Book Prize for “Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World,” published by Knopf.
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Health
In the genes, but which ones?
A team of researchers, led Harvard Professor David I. Laibson and Christopher F. Chabris of Union College, has found that virtually all claims that intelligence is associated with specific genes are wrong.
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Campus & Community
Barbara Lindsay Norton, 20-year staffer, dies
Barbara Lindsay Norton, a longtime Harvard employee, died on Feb. 17 in North Andover, Mass., after illness.
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Campus & Community
Eight from Harvard headed Down Under
The Harvard Club of Australia Foundation has announced fellowship awards to eight accomplished Harvard researchers intending collaborative scientific research in Australia during 2012, and to two Australian researchers headed to Harvard.
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Campus & Community
Sabeti named Young Global Leader
Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Pardis Sabeti has been selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.
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Arts & Culture
From V-2 rocket to moon landing
A new book explores the connections among World War II scientists, the V-2 missile, and the U.S. race to the moon, led by German émigré Wernher von Braun.
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Nation & World
India to retain economic ties to Iran
Though India shares global concerns about the possible development of nuclear weapons by Iran and is working to reduce its reliance on Iranian oil, India needs to continue fuel imports that are critical to the welfare of millions of people, said India’s ambassador to the United States.
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Nation & World
Superstar teachers
As leaders in government and business search for ways to strengthen the U.S. recovery, new research from faculty at Harvard and Columbia indicates that elementary school teachers have an impact on how much their students earn as adults and, by extension, on the nation’s economy.
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Science & Tech
In distant space, a water world
Observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have added a new type of planet to the mix. By analyzing the previously discovered world GJ1214b, astronomer Zachory Berta of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and colleagues proved that it is a water world enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere.
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Nation & World
Fostering global understanding
A panel of scholars made up of the directors of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centers met to discuss how to promote better understanding between the Islamic world and the West.
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Health
Repercussions of gender nonconformity
Children in the U.S. whose activity choices, interests, and pretend play before age 11 fall outside those typically expressed by their biological sex face increased risk of being physically, psychologically, and sexually abused, and of suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by early adulthood, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard School…
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Science & Tech
Right choice, but not the intuitive one
When faced with a tough choice, we already have the cognitive tools we need to make the right decision, Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology, told a Harvard Law School audience on Feb. 16. The hard part is overcoming the tricks our minds play on us that render rational decision-making nearly impossible.
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Science & Tech
‘Pop!’ goes the robot
A production method inspired by children’s pop-up books enables rapid fabrication of tiny, complex devices. Devised by engineers at Harvard, the ingenious layering and folding process will enable the creation of a broad range of electromechanical devices.
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Campus & Community
Harvard tennis pro nabs honors
Harvard’s Head Tennis Professional Michael L. Mercier has been named Professional Tennis Registry (PTR) Member of the Year for the State.
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Campus & Community
Faculty Council meeting held Feb. 15
At the Feb. 15 meeting of the Faculty Council, its members considered proposals for a Ph.D. program in education and to change the schedule of regular meetings of the Faculty in the rules of faculty procedure. They also met with President Drew Faust to ask and answer questions as representatives of the faculty.
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Campus & Community
Making the World Smaller – Daniel Lieberman – Harvard Thinks Big
Daniel Lieberman Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology
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Campus & Community
Confusion, Play and Postponing Certainty – Eleanor Duckworth – Harvard Thinks Big
Eleanor Duckworth Professor of Education Harvard Graduate School of Education
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Campus & Community
Stimulating Cells – Doug Melton – Harvard Thinks Big
Doug Melton Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard University and co-Director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute
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Campus & Community
Act Big: Dare to See – Kaia Stern – Harvard Thinks Big
Kaia Stern Director of the Prison Studies Project Visiting Faculty at Harvard Divinity School Visiting Faculty in Sociology at Harvard University Visiting Faculty in African and African American Studies at Harvard University
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Health
Fears of bioterrorism or an accidental release
In a preview of what is likely now playing out in a closed-door meeting of the World Health Organization, a cadre of experts on infectious disease gathered Feb. 15 at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) to debate whether efforts to combat a deadly form of flu have actually increased the risk to public…
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Nation & World
Poised to strike?
As Iran moves closer to having a nuclear weapon, Israel faces an existential moment.
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Health
Sending DNA robot to do the job
Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have developed a robotic device made from DNA that could potentially seek out specific cell targets within a complex mixture of cell types and deliver important molecular instructions, such as telling cancer cells to self-destruct or programming immune responses.
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Arts & Culture
The Last Supper as Passover
A leading cultural and intellectual historian of Renaissance Europe, Princeton Professor Anthony Grafton suggests that the diligent work of 16th-century scholar Joseph Scaliger, in particular, led to the theory that the Last Supper may well have been in fact a Passover Seder.
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Campus & Community
GSAS Dean Allan Brandt to step down
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dean Allan M. Brandt, who pioneered a new approach to curricular development with the launch of the Graduate Seminars in General Education, announced Feb. 15 that he will step down as GSAS dean this spring owing to health considerations. He plans to return to the faculty when his…
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Health
Willing a way to clean water
Kennedy School Fellow Daniele Lantagne is using her engineering background to expand on a program, partially developed by Professor Michael Kremer, to provide clean water to communities in rural areas. The soluti
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Arts & Culture
When religion turned inward
A groundbreaking speech by Ralph Waldo Emerson at Harvard Divinity School in 1838 helped to transform faith, spur the transcendentalist movement, and change the future of Harvard.
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Health
Pain relief for patients in Uganda
A collaboration between anesthesiologists at Massachusetts General Hospital and overworked doctors at an African hospital provides training in a technique that can soothe patients during surgical recoveries.
