Month: October 2013

  • Arts & Culture

    The digital Dickinson

    Houghton Library and Harvard University Press are two of the leading partners in the new Emily Dickinson Archive, a joint venture with other institutions that brings together most of her poem manuscripts.

  • Nation & World

    In Chile, a head start

    A Harvard-backed initiative in Chile aims to reduce economic disparity through an early education health initiative supported by the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Harvard Medical School.

  • Nation & World

    Spoils of war

    While global pressure to curb the use of children in combat has worked in some places, the persistent challenge for international organizations is to find ways to integrate damaged former soldiers back into the communities they were led to violate and abandon, Harvard panelists say.

  • Campus & Community

    Macrofied

    The close-up perspective of the macro lens turns everyday surfaces into dynamic landscapes.

  • Science & Tech

    In Ireland’s recent history, a model for clean growth

    Clean economic growth is not just a pipe dream — it happened in Ireland between 1990 and 2010, when emissions dropped 10 percent even as the country’s economy grew 265 percent, the leader of that country’s Green Party said in a Harvard talk.

  • Campus & Community

    The games off the field

    Harvard welcomed 700 of its neighbors from Allston, Brighton, and Cambridge to the annual community football program on Saturday.

  • Arts & Culture

    The queen and the sculptor

    French Egyptologist Alain Zivie, a visiting scholar at the Semitic Museum, told a Harvard audience of his discovery of the tomb of Thutmose, who he believes is the artist who created the iconic bust of Queen Nefertiti.

  • Campus & Community

    Nine named 2013 Cabot Fellows

    Nine professors in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences have been named Walter Channing Cabot Fellows. The 2013 honorees were awarded for their distinguished publications.

  • Arts & Culture

    When all turn right, go left

    Avant-garde visual artist Robert Wilson delivered a talk at the Graduate School of Design, and jarred his audience into new imaginative spaces.

  • Campus & Community

    American Academy announces 233rd class

    Harvard scholars are among 164 influential artists, scientists, scholars, authors, and institutional leaders who were inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at a ceremony in Cambridge on Oct. 12.

  • Health

    New insight on wild nights

    New research suggests that, despite moonlight’s apparent hunting advantage, large predators such as lions are actually less active on the brightest nights, while many prey animals — despite the risk of being eaten — become more active.

  • Health

    A new era in disaster relief

    A report edited by a research scientist from the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative highlights the increasingly important role of social media and cellphones in disaster relief.

  • Arts & Culture

    Poetry spreads its web

    At month’s end, Professor Elisa New will begin teaching “Poetry in America,” her first digital course on HarvardX.

  • Campus & Community

    BRA approves Allston development plan

    The Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) on Oct. 17 unanimously approved Harvard’s 10-year development plan in Allston, giving the initial green light to seven new building projects and two major renovations.

  • Health

    How ‘traffic light’ labels promote healthier eating

    A simple, color-coded system for labeling food items in a hospital cafeteria appears to increase customers’ attention to the nutritional value of their food choices, and encourage the purchase of the healthiest items.

  • Science & Tech

    Mindfulness over matters

    Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and a pioneer in applying mindfulness to the field of medicine, discussed how the concept can be integrated into K-12 education.

  • Campus & Community

    Faculty Council meeting held Oct. 16

    On Oct. 16 the members of the Faculty Council heard a review of the life sciences concentrations and discussed library journal pricing.  They also heard an update on the development…

  • Campus & Community

    Hidden Spaces: Emerson Chapel

    In Emerson Chapel, where Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered his groundbreaking 1838 Commencement address to the Harvard Divinity School (HDS), a small group of students sat quietly on yoga mats and…

  • Arts & Culture

    Moving dirt, and history

    A Harvard student who is interested in a career in archaeology spent her summer on a Peruvian dig, with lots of mundane work and a bright discovery to show for it.

  • Campus & Community

    Howard Gardner: ‘A Blessing of Influences’

    One of an occasional story in which Harvard faculty members recount their early influences, Howard Gardner recalls the mentors who helped to shape his early academic career.

  • Science & Tech

    Dirty deeds, deconstructed

    New studies co-authored by Harvard Business School Professor Francesca Gino find that, contrary to decades of accepted wisdom, cheating feels good.

  • Nation & World

    The poetry of water

    Harvard anthropologist Steven Caton made his name studying tribal poetry in Yemen three decades ago. But it was memories of a tribal war that drew him back to that nation in 2001, and the scarcity of water he discovered there launched him into a new avenue of investigation.

  • Health

    TB’s links to diabetes

    Tuberculosis researchers from around New England gathered at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT to examine the links between metabolic diseases such as diabetes and tuberculosis.

  • Campus & Community

    Outlining academic integrity

    A panel of faculty led a discussion about academic integrity with an audience of undergraduates, staffers, administrators, and other faculty members. This session was the first in a series of community-wide discussions on the topic.

  • Science & Tech

    The teaching launch

    A new study found that middle school teachers can have a real impact not only on students’ short-term educations, but on whether they attend college and on the size of their future paychecks.

  • Nation & World

    Brick by brick

    Helping part of coastal Chile to recover completely and prosper following the deadly 2010 earthquake and tsunami is the guiding ethos of Recupera Chile, an initiative based at Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies that involves half a dozen Harvard Schools.

  • Nation & World

    A farewell to arms

    Professor Matthew Meselson, a biologist and expert on chemical and biological weapons, talks about the surprise winner of the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize.

  • Science & Tech

    National parks face dangerous foe

    Thirty-eight of the United States’ national parks are experiencing “accidental fertilization” at or above a critical threshold for ecological damage, according to a study led by Harvard University researchers and published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

  • Campus & Community

    Common Threads: In-between days

    What to wear when it’s not quite sweater weather, not quite right for short sleeves? In those in-between days when the season is sorting itself out, dressing at Harvard can be a head-scratching task — especially for those incoming students hailing from balmier climates.

  • Science & Tech

    What’s in a face?

    Using scans of the brain, Harvard researchers show that patterns of neural activity change when people look at black and white faces, and male and female faces.