Featured series 
Year: 2013
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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.
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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…
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Campus & Community
Erwin Hiebert, 93, dies
Erwin Hiebert, professor of the history of science emeritus, died on Nov. 28, at the age of 93.
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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.
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Nation & World
Inside India’s pop-up city
Every 12 years, the Kumbh Mela, a centuries-old Hindu pilgrimage, temporarily transforms an empty floodplain in India into one of the biggest cities in the world. This month, an interdisciplinary team of Harvard professors, students, and researchers set out to map the gathering for the first time.
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Campus & Community
Recalling King’s later legacy
The Rev. Jonathan Walton, Harvard’s Pusey Minister of Memorial Church and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, galvanized Boston’s 43rd annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Breakfast with a keynote speech that contrasted the present-day ”sanitized and sterilized” version of the civil rights leader’s dream for America with the real message of economic inclusiveness that he…
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Health
New avenue in neurobiology
Harvard stem cell biologists have proven that it is possible to turn one type of already differentiated neuron into another inside the brain, and their findings may have enormous implications for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
