Featured series 
Year: 2012
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Nation & World
Innovation recognized by Ash Center
New York City’s Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO) was named the winner of the Innovations in American Government Award today by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School of Government.
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Arts & Culture
Where medicine meets artistry
Transit Gallery at Harvard Medical School, with a new show up, invites busy walkers to slow down and look. Co-exhibitors Svetlana Boym and Deb Todd Wheeler will discuss their work and attend a reception on Feb. 15.
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Nation & World
A call to reverse security measures
Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein visited Harvard Law School for a talk sponsored by the HLS Forum and the Harvard Law Record. At the event, both men discussed what they called lawless and violent practices by the White House and its agencies that have become institutionalized by both political parties.
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Campus & Community
Affordable housing, saved
Representatives of Harvard and many agencies gather to celebrate preserving the affordability of 25 homes in Chapman Arms Apartments in Harvard Square.
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Campus & Community
Ideas to improve the everyday
All-star Harvard faculty members at “Harvard Thinks Big” dazzled and provoked their audience in 10-minute talks Thursday that framed major questions about happiness, stem cell growth, runaway obesity, and the exploding American prison population.
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Science & Tech
Trouble afloat: Ocean plastics
Plastic pollution in the oceans is a large and growing problem, but one that may be out of the reach of consumers to solve and instead may require cooperation from industry, said Max Liboiron, regional co-director of the Plastic Pollution Coalition.
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Campus & Community
Update on the Library transition
Provost Alan Garber shares how a new organizational design and strategic direction, recently recommended by the Library Board, will position the Harvard Library to respond to the evolving expectations of the 21st century scholar.
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Science & Tech
Street smarts
Students develop hurricane response plans on Cambridge roads, gaining practical experience in computational science competition, ComputeFest, a two-week program hosted by the recently created Institute for Applied Computational Science within the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
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Campus & Community
John Legend is Artist of the Year
Recording artist, concert performer, and philanthropist John Legend has been named Harvard University’s 2012 Artist of the Year by the Harvard Foundation.
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Health
A swimsuit like shark skin? Not so fast
Experiments conducted in a Harvard lab reveal that, while sharks’ sandpaperlike skin does allow the animals to swim faster and more efficiently, the structure of some high-tech swimsuits has no effect when it comes to reducing drag as swimmers move through the water.
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Arts & Culture
Notes on music’s lessons
At Harvard as part of an ongoing lecture and performance series, musician and composer Wynton Marsalis met with the Harvard community for two far-reaching discussions in which music and the arts played seminal roles.
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Arts & Culture
In a land of equality, racism
“Queloides,” an art exhibit visiting Harvard, shows how racial stereotypes prevailed even after the Cuban Revolution.
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Health
Exploring roots of hunger, eating behaviors
Synaptic plasticity — the ability of the synaptic connections between the brain’s neurons to change and modify over time — has been shown to be a key to memory formation and the acquisition of new learning behaviors. Now research reveals that the neural circuits controlling hunger and eating behaviors are also controlled by plasticity.
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Campus & Community
Student to attend Warwick Economics Summit
Economics concentrator Pulkit Agrawal ’15 has been awarded a bursary by the University of Warwick International office to attend the Warwick Economics Summit on Feb. 17-19.
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Health
Deciding to go left or right
Researchers in a Harvard lab have developed a device, dubbed LADY GAGA, that allows them for the first time to precisely control airborne scents. They have used the device in their work unraveling how animals make navigational decisions based on their environment.
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Health
Right time for ‘end-of-life’ talk
A study by Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute finds that most terminally ill cancer patients discuss end-of-life care with physicians but that such discussions often occur late in their illness.
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Nation & World
In the end, Somali famine preventable
Despite historical links to natural disasters, the modern world’s global food web means that famines today are created more by man than by nature. Officials say a famine just ending in Somalia was caused by a failure of international early warning systems and the local Al-Shabaab militia blocking food aid.
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Arts & Culture
The melding of American music
Backed by an all-star band, Wynton Marsalis explored the “mulatto identity of our national music” with a rollicking performance and a thoughtful lecture on America’s porous tuneful genres at Sanders Theatre Feb. 6.
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Nation & World
Duncan urges experiments in education
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called for large-scale educational reform during a talk at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.
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Nation & World
Putting history on trial
Historians can prove useful in a courtroom, a case involving Kenyan abuse reveals, and they can learn a lot too.
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Campus & Community
‘Beautiful building’ recognized
Harvard University’s newest residential building at 10 Akron St. in Cambridge has won the Harleston Parker Medal for 2011 as “the single most beautiful building or other structure” recently built in metropolitan Boston.
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Nation & World
New initiative for better teaching
The Harvard Initiative for Learning & Teaching sponsored a daylong conference that united experts and scholars from the University and beyond to debate, discuss, and share ideas on innovative pedagogy.
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Campus & Community
Reaffirming bonds in India
Over the past several years, Harvard University has been ramping up its involvement in India and South Asia.
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Nation & World
The revolution continues
In a conversation that ranged from the recent parliamentary elections to the ongoing sexual abuse of women to a new wave of journalists, panelists at the Feb. 2 Harvard Kennedy School Forum on Egypt expressed both fear and hope for a country still in the midst of a revolution.
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Science & Tech
For cutting-edge biomedical materials, try corn
One might expect, these days, to find corn products in food, fuel, and fabric, but a corn-based glue that can heal an injured eyeball? That’s a-maize-ing.
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Health
The search for life’s stirrings
As science wrestles with the problem of how life arose on Earth, hindsight shows that seemingly intractable obstacles can have simple, even elegant solutions, said Nobel laureate Jack Szostak.
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Campus & Community
A welcome for Man of the Year
Harvard students and staff were drawn to Hasty Pudding’s Man of the Year, actor and writer Jason Segel, when he visited Harvard on Friday.
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Campus & Community
Tommy Lee Jones named Arts Medalist
Actor and director Tommy Lee Jones ’69 is the recipient of the 2012 Harvard Arts Medal, which will be awarded by Harvard President Drew Faust on April 26.
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Nation & World
Experts assess impact of Citizens United
At an event sponsored by the Harvard Law School (HLS) American Constitution Society on Tuesday, HLS Professor Lawrence Lessig, author of “Republic Lost,” and Jeff Clements, author of “Corporations Are Not People,” reviewed the impact that Citizens United has had on the political process.
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Campus & Community
Bunches of support
Harvard’s 25th annual Daffodil Days campaign to help raise money for the American Cancer Society is under way through March 1, with gifts scheduled for delivery on March 19.
