Featured series 
Tag: Alvin Powell
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Health
Catching up on health care
John McDonough of HSPH talks about the rollout of health insurance exchanges as part of the Affordable Care Act.
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Science & Tech
The search for other Earths
Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics are drafting the target list for NASA’s next planet-finding telescope, the orbiting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, which will search the Earth’s galactic neighborhood for planets that might support life.
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Health
New test for Down syndrome
Experts in child health gathered at Harvard Medical School on Tuesday for a symposium on how genome biology is changing children’s health.
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Health
A tiny, time-released treatment
Targeted nanotherapy is the wave of the medical future, according to Omid Farokhzad, a Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital researcher who has two nanoparticle-based therapies in clinical trials and a slew of ideas for new ways to put the tiny capsules to work for human health.
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Science & Tech
Galileo’s reach
Some four centuries after Galileo observed spots on the surface of the sun, historians, musicians and actors came together at Harvard on Oct. 4 for an all-day conference to celebrate his discovery.
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Campus & Community
Harvard alumnus wins share of medicine Nobel
James E. Rothman, a 1976 Harvard alumnus, won a share of the 2013 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for work illuminating the internal machinery that cells use to transport molecules.
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Science & Tech
The Himalayas’ amazing biodiversity
Can science and art join forces to conserve one of the world’s richest natural areas? UMass Boston biology professor Kamal Bawa and photographer Sandesh Kadur, a National Geographic emerging explorer, have joined forces to create a richly illustrated, scientifically accurate account of biodiversity in the Himalayas.
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Health
Dream saga of WWII
As part of a project by Professor Deirdre Barrett to resurrect a study started in 1940, a group of Harvard undergraduates probed the dreams of British officers captured early in World War II and held in a German prison camp.
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Health
Flu’s coming, but which kind?
With a new flu virus appearing in China in April and a new SARS-like respiratory ailment appearing in the Middle East, the Gazette sat down with Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch to talk about the upcoming flu season.
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Science & Tech
Fresh hopes on climate change
A top U.N. climate official said doom and gloom on the issue is just part of the story and that there are many innovative programs and products that provide reasons for hope.
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Science & Tech
Following the missteps of giants
Blunders by otherwise great scientists took center stage at the Barker Center on Sept. 25 when a faculty panel posed questions to Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute Senior Astrophysicist Mario Livio about his latest book on the subject.
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Health
Narrative of the body, with a nasty twist
Many modern chronic diseases result from mismatches between how our bodies evolved to be used and how we use them today, Harvard evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman writes in a new book.
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Nation & World
Citizen of the world
In recent years, Harvard has been strengthening its presence around the world, supporting international research, offering study-abroad opportunities, and opening offices in India, China, Mexico, Brazil, and other countries.
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Nation & World
Killings in Nairobi hit home
Elif Yavuz, a recent graduate of the Harvard School of Public Health, was among dozens of people killed when the Somalia-based Shabab militant group took over a mall in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
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Health
Legal remedies
Attorneys, judges, scholars and activists interested in expanding health rights through the law were at the Harvard School of Public Health to discuss progress and challenges.
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Campus & Community
Harvard kicks off fundraising effort
Harvard University kicked off the public phase of a $6.5 billion fundraising campaign today, designed to benefit key priorities during constrained financial times. If successful, it would be the largest ever in higher education.
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Health
When bacteria fight back
After the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report on the threat from drug-resistant bacteria, David Hooper, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and an authority on the subject, discussed the issues during a question-and-answer session.
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Health
Recalling a lab-led rescue
Professor Howard Green stumbled across a skin transplant technique that involved growing keratinocytes into full skin layers, making him a pioneer in regenerative medicine.
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Health
The whys of rising obesity
A panel discussion held by the Forum at Harvard School of Public Health probed the reasons for the modern epidemic of overeating and its particularly harmful effects on children, who are especially susceptible to food marketing.
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Health
Lifting the ‘family curse’
Removing a woman’s healthy breasts might seem like a radical response to fears of breast cancer. But for women with genetic mutations that put them at high risk of developing the disease, it’s a step that can cut their vulnerability by 90 to 95 percent.
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Campus & Community
Managing a ‘seismic shift’
Harvard simultaneously faces stiff economic challenges and evolving opportunities, President Drew Faust said in her opening-of-year speech.
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Nation & World
Piecing together Egypt’s rupture
It was the Muslim Brotherhood’s success at the ballot box and the poor prospects for opposition candidates in future elections that were at the root of last summer’s military takeover in Egypt, a Harvard Kennedy School Middle East specialist said Sept. 5.
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Health
Destination space
Jessica Meir, an assistant professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, is the latest member of the Harvard community given a chance to head to space, joining moon-walkers and Hubble Space Telescope repairmen as she trains to become a NASA astronaut.
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Health
The little old machine that could
In the high-tech laboratory at the Arnold Arboretum’s Weld Hill Research Building, amid an array of expensive, shiny new equipment, sits a 1931 microtome, a machine whose well-oiled parts keep cranking out slices of tissue just 10 micrometers wide, thin enough for light to penetrate and perfect for making slides to see the internal cellular…
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Science & Tech
Biases that can blind us
Psychology Professor Mahzarin Banaji gave incoming members of Harvard’s Class of 2017 a tour of their own biases, helping to raise awareness that can help them avoid making decisions based on unconscious preferences.
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Nation & World
Who needed a stapler?
Harvard Professors Eric Mazur and Gary King, together with postdoctoral fellow Brian Lukoff, took an idea about how to change classroom teaching and created a company based on it. When the company sold last spring, it didn’t even own a stapler.
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Science & Tech
Fueling the entrepreneurial spirit
A growing number of Harvard faculty members, fellows, and even students are looking to take their innovative ideas a step further and bring them to the marketplace.
