Year: 2012

  • Campus & Community

    Woodworkers

    Artist Alan Hark runs the Mather House wood-turning studio, where students work and hone their skills with wood.

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard’s changing financial profile

    The University issued its annual financial report Nov. 2, with a letter from Vice President for Finance Dan Shore and Treasurer James Rothenberg highlighting how Harvard’s financial profile “has changed considerably.” Shore and Executive Vice President Katie Lapp spoke with the Gazette about the ramifications of that changing profile.

  • Campus & Community

    Open enrollment ends Nov. 14

    Open enrollment, the annual period when Harvard employees can make changes to their benefits, began Oct. 31.

  • Campus & Community

    Halloween on the move

    Approximately 30 runners, some in Halloween gear, gathered for the free Harvard On The Move run, which leaves from the steps of the MAC at 5:15 p.m. Wednesdays.

  • Arts & Culture

    The art of the possible

    Artist Kerry James Marshall’s massive woodcut print, on view at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, challenges the artistic status quo.

  • Science & Tech

    Crossing the river of myths

    Grasp the right facts, said a renowned medical statistician, and the world is more complicated and interesting, with fewer myths that divide one region from another.

  • Health

    New genetic links for Crohn’s, colitis

    Researchers find that they have the necessary starting material to understand the pathways that contribute to Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, and they also have a framework to better appreciate that these may not be two distinct diseases, but rather collections of many different diseases.

  • Science & Tech

    Unearthing a dietary behavior

    A new Harvard study says that pica — and particularly geophagy, or the eating of soil or clay — is far more prevalent in Madagascar, one of the few areas of the world where it had gone unreported, than researchers previously thought. The research also suggests that the behavior may be more prevalent worldwide, particularly…

  • Campus & Community

    Growing community for students

    At the start of the fall semester, the popular Graduate Commons program was expanded to include two additional buildings, more than doubling the number of units included in the program.

  • Arts & Culture

    The designing woman

    Radcliffe graphic designer Jessica Brilli does what she loves and loves what she does, using her artistic talent in her personal and professional life. A reception will be held Nov. 8 from 5:30 to 7 p.m.

  • Health

    So doggone complicated

    Geneticist Elaine Ostrander runs a comparative-genomics lab that examines dog DNA to understand better the traits that might aid understanding of human diseases.

  • Campus & Community

    HMS faculty member wins Young Leader Award

    The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) announced that Somava Stout of Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance is one of 10 winners of its first-ever RWJF Young Leader Award.

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard University returns to normal operations Tuesday

    Harvard University will resume normal operations on Tuesday morning. Classes will be held and all employees are expected to report for work. Staff who have been directly affected by the storm…

  • Campus & Community

    University returns to normal operations Tuesday

    Harvard University will resume normal operations on Tuesday morning. Classes will be held and all employees are expected to report for work. Staff who have been directly affected by the storm…

  • Campus & Community

    Calm rising through storm

    Harvard officials started getting ready for Hurricane Sandy’s roundhouse punch last week, and by Monday they were supplied, staffed, watching, and responding.

  • Nation & World

    Peer pressure in politics

    Many people believe that idealism motivates them to open their wallets for a favorite candidate or that civic duty motivates them to vote. But don’t discount peer pressure as a factor in elections, a political scientist says.

  • Campus & Community

    Bonding time

    Legendary Harvard rowing coach Harry L. Parker and his daughter, Abigail, were lucky to share some bonding time during the 48th Annual Head of the Charles Regatta on Oct. 20.

  • Nation & World

    Coaching tips from Gawande

    “The biggest factor in determining how much students learn isn’t class size or standardized testing, but the quality of their teachers,” said Atul Gawande in a Harvard Graduate School of Education talk on ways teaching can be improved through coaching.

  • Campus & Community

    Faculty Council meeting held Oct. 24

    At its fourth meeting of the year on Oct. 24, the Faculty Council continued its discussion of proposed updates to the College’s alcohol policy and heard a presentation on House renewal.

  • Campus & Community

    Frank Moore Cross, 91

    Biblical scholar Frank Moore Cross wrote 300 academic papers but always returned to the classroom, teaching until his retirement in 1992. He died on Oct. 17 at age 91. A memorial service will be held Nov. 10 at the Memorial Church.

  • Campus & Community

    A wider mission for Ed Portal

    The Harvard Allston Education Portal celebrated its fifth year of programming and an expansion of its facility and its mission with a community event that featured performances by Harvard students and a lecture by faculty member Michael Sandel.

  • Health

    Aspirin’s impact on colorectal cancer

    Harvard researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute find that aspirin therapy can extend the life of colorectal cancer patients whose tumors carry a mutation in a key gene, but it has no effect on patients who lack the mutation.

  • Nation & World

    The psychology of poverty

    A fellow in a new joint Harvard-MIT fellowship program in economics, history, and politics opens a lab in Kenya to illuminate the economic decision-making of those studied least by economists: the poor.

  • Campus & Community

    A $30M gift to University

    The Hutchins Family Foundation is giving $30 million to Harvard that will support academic initiatives in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and also launch the Hutchins Family Challenge Fund for House Renewal.

  • Health

    A plan to stop cholera’s spread

    HMS Professor John Mekalanos, an expert on cholera, suggested Oct. 22 that relief workers and peacekeepers from cholera-endemic countries be treated with antibiotics before serving in cholera-free countries, as a way to avoid a repeat of the post-earthquake cholera epidemic in Haiti, which has killed thousands.

  • Arts & Culture

    Found in translation

    French historian Roger Chartier, whose work examines the history of books, publishing, and reading, explored the creation of literary archives and the appearance in the 1750s of authorial manuscripts during a talk at Radcliffe. “Take Note” will “consider the past and future of note taking on Nov. 1 and 2.

  • Nation & World

    America at a crossroads

    Offering both a historic and contemporary perspective on the current election, several Harvard faculty members reflected on how themes from America’s past are playing out on the national stage.

  • Campus & Community

    The writing’s on the wall

    From lovers’ pocketknife engravings to historical markers, the written word makes its mark on Harvard’s campus, whether tucked away in nooks and inconspicuous corners or emblazoned on Harvard’s Houses, gates, and walls.

  • Science & Tech

    Good day, moons

    CfA fellow David Kipping is heading a hunt for astronomical bodies at the edge of our ability to detect them: moons circling planets in other solar systems.

  • Science & Tech

    Cautious geohacking

    By tailoring geoengineering efforts by region and by need, a new model promises to maximize the effectiveness of solar radiation management while mitigating its potential side effects and risks.