Month: January 2013

  • Campus & Community

    A Pudding Pot for Cotillard

    Actress Marion Cotillard came to Cambridge to receive her Hasty Pudding award as the 2013 Woman of the Year.

  • Arts & Culture

    Lunch with Tiffany

    British director and Tony Award winner John Tiffany is reworking the classic Tennessee Williams play “The Glass Menagerie” for the American Repertory Theater.

  • Arts & Culture

    26 immortal portals

    A January Arts Intensive in journalism explored the facts, fun, and stories behind Harvard Yard’s 26 gates, including architectural features that are little noticed by those who pass through them.

  • Science & Tech

    Competition that computes

    It might appear that evacuating a major city following a natural disaster and playing foosball have little, if anything, in common. For students participating in the IACS Computational Challenge, however, both are problems that can be tackled with some clever coding.

  • Campus & Community

    Hidden spaces: Adolphus Busch Courtyard

    Asked what she likes about Busch Courtyard, Michelle Timmerman ’13 writes, “It’s … an enclave, and is so apart from standard Harvard architecture, and therefore feels apart from standard Harvard life, that you can tuck away there, slip in the side gate — or, if you’re well-informed and well-intentioned, through the Center for European Studies…

  • Campus & Community

    Ice skating in the frosty air

    Harvard’s popular outdoor ice rink has reopened, offering students and community members a fun winter diversion at the heart of campus.

  • Health

    Fighting a global menace

    Students at the Harvard School of Public Health are joining forces to draw attention to World Cancer Day on Feb. 4, organizing a symposium of experts to talk about the problem and collecting signatures for a declaration of cancer-related global health priorities.

  • Science & Tech

    When fairness prevails

    Using computer simulations designed to play a simple economic “game,” researchers at Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics showed that uncertainty is a key ingredient behind fairness. Their work is described in a Jan. 21 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

  • Nation & World

    Five ideas for better schools

    A panel of leading thinkers shared five visions of education’s future during an Askwith Forum on Tuesday at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The scenarios ranged widely, from redefining the function of schools and teachers to adopting learning models from other nations.

  • Arts & Culture

    Direct from Broadway

    The Broadway star Christine Ebersole shared her advice and some tricks of the trade with three undergraduates during a master class sponsored by Harvard’s Office for the Arts.

  • Nation & World

    ‘A Whisper to a Roar’ sparks discussion

    Panelists convened at the Harvard Kennedy School on Monday to discuss individuals’ motivations to risk their lives to fight for democracy.

  • Arts & Culture

    Pearls of Persian art

    A generous donation by the late Norma Jean Calderwood — philanthropist, autodidact, and keen-eyed collector — brought a millennium’s worth of Islamic art to Harvard, some of which is now on display for the first time at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum.

  • Campus & Community

    Three named Damon Runyon Fellows

    The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on supporting innovative early career researchers, has named 15 new Damon Runyon Fellows, including three from Harvard.

  • Arts & Culture

    On the nature of difference

    Harvard College Dean Evelynn M. Hammonds discussed her book “The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics” before 50 students as part of Wintersession activities.

  • Nation & World

    Alums share big ideas

    Volunteerism — not whether, but how best to give back — was at the forefront of the “Alumni Think Big” conference session on Saturday, as eight Harvard graduates and one visiting practitioner presented their “Big Ideas That Will Change the World” at a Wintersession forum.

  • Campus & Community

    Multimedia immersion

    During Wintersession, the Harvard College Library hosted a multimedia authoring “boot camp,” reflecting the increasingly essential use of media in academic work.

  • Health

    Doctors can feel their patients’ pain

    A novel experiment illuminates the importance of the doctor-patient relationship, providing the first data into the underlying neurobiology of the caregiver.

  • Nation & World

    ‘Public Interested?’

    Joseph P. Kennedy III kicked off Wintersession’s “Public Interested?” conference on Saturday, speaking about his life in public service and urging audience members to create their own careers by following their passions.

  • Health

    HMS partners with NFL Players Association

    he National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) has awarded Harvard Medical School a $100 million grant to create a transformative 10-year initiative — Harvard Integrated Program to Protect and Improve the Health of NFLPA Members.

  • Arts & Culture

    Widening the Wheelwright

    Every year since 1935, the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) has awarded one of its graduates the Arthur W. Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship, praised by generations of recipients for enriching careers in most cases already under way.

  • Health

    Watching teeth grow

    For more than two decades, scientists have relied on studies linking tooth development in juvenile primates with their weaning as a rough proxy for understanding similar landmarks in the evolution of early humans. New research from Harvard, however, challenges that thinking by showing that tooth development and weaning aren’t as closely related as previously thought.

  • Science & Tech

    Hack Week nurtures innovators

    Seventeen teams of Harvard students toiled on campus during the last days of winter break, working to finish computer projects during the annual Hack Week sponsored by the Hack Harvard student group.

  • Nation & World

    After Katrina, residents rolled up sleeves

    Tom Wooten ’08 discussed his latest book, which profiles several grassroots recovery efforts in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard Mobile expands

    A new version of the University-wide mobile application was released this month with a number of functional, design, and content enhancements.

  • Health

    Mutations drive malignant melanoma

    Two mutations that collectively occur in 71 percent of malignant melanoma tumors have been discovered in what Harvard scientists call the “dark matter” of the cancer genome, where cancer-related mutations haven’t been previously found.

  • Campus & Community

    Scuba, the Harvard way

    Wintersession offers Harvard College students unusual opportunities to explore fresh interests and develop new skill sets, such as personal-finance management, first-responder certification, and ethnic cooking mastery.

  • Science & Tech

    An idea that changed the world

    Harvard celebrates the 100th anniversary of a computational principle that was little noticed in its time, but that underlies all of modern science.

  • Campus & Community

    Homing in on bones

    Skulls and bones drew a class of Cambridge third0graders to Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. They visited the museum’s zooarchaeology lab to learn about different animals and how they relate to the study of human life.

  • Campus & Community

    Erwin Hiebert, 93, dies

    Erwin Hiebert, professor of the history of science emeritus, died on Nov. 28, at the age of 93.

  • Campus & Community

    Music for a better world

    The annual Joyful Noise gospel concert, a celebration honoring the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., took place on Saturday at Sanders Theatre.