Tag: Alvin Powell

  • Science & Tech

    When the sky turned black

    Director Ken Burns presented clips of his new documentary on the Dust Bowl at Harvard’s Boylston Hall, talking about the creative process that he uses in his films.

  • Health

    An experiment gone horribly awry

    Victims of U.S. syphilis experiments in Guatemala are still awaiting compensation that may or may not come, even as new laws passed in the wake of 9/11 make it harder, in some circumstances, to sue disease researchers for wrongdoing, panelists at Harvard Law School said.

  • Health

    Green light for Obamacare

    Health care specialists discussed post-election Obamacare, including potential bumps in the road, in a panel talk at the Harvard School of Public Health.

  • Health

    Probing sleep’s drowsy mystery

    Harvard researchers have worked for years to understand better the familiar mystery of sleep, highlighting not only what happens when we close our eyes, but also the effects on us when we don’t.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Campus & Community

    Paperwork for a new future

    Harvard University has submitted a new development agenda for Allston, detailing nine projects slated for development in the next decade. The projects will complement planned activity on the Health and Life Science Center and the residential and retail development envisioned for Barry’s Corner.

  • Science & Tech

    Seeking to connect on water issues

    The U.S. lacks a national water policy, resulting in pushing and pulling by a wide array of competing interests in managing the nation’s water supply, said experts at a Radcliffe symposium.

  • Health

    Closing the care gap

    Models of low-cost, high-quality health care are cause for hope that disparities in treatment between U.S. whites and minorities can be closed, said speakers at a University-wide symposium on Oct. 11.

  • Arts & Culture

    The epic of Hadzi

    The stone sculpture “Gilgamesh” by the late Professor Dimitri Hadzi, who died in 2006, was donated to Harvard’s Mineralogical and Geological Museum by his wife, Cynthia.

  • Science & Tech

    A monumental task

    Harvard’s Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Program is making a digital scan of Harvard Yard’s Chinese stele as part of a conservation effort aimed at preserving the ornate gift from Harvard’s Chinese alumni on Harvard’s 300th birthday.

  • Science & Tech

    A close eye on population growth

    Joel Cohen, head of the Laboratory of Populations at Rockefeller and Columbia universities, looked at the latest projections for world population growth, and factors that could alter them, in a Harvard talk.

  • Health

    Mothers in peril

    Every 90 seconds, a mother dies in pregnancy or of childbirth complications — a tragic statistic, but one that may drive efforts to improve health care in developing countries, said public health specialists in a Harvard talk.

  • Science & Tech

    ‘Silent Spring,’ 50 years on

    Environmentalists and faculty members gathered at Sanders Theatre to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” which catalyzed the environmental movement in its impassioned presentation of the impact of chemicals on nature.

  • Arts & Culture

    The book club goes online

    Five of Harvard’s regional centers are teaming up on an outreach program to teachers that takes them on a literary world tour, through an online book club featuring readings that illuminate ordinary life in Libya, Morocco, the Dominican Republic, Russia, and Nigeria.

  • Nation & World

    Hope for continental recovery, in 2013

    A top European Union official says there are signs that reform measures taken in response to the economic crisis in Europe are working, and that a recovery could begin in 2013.

  • Health

    Putting humanity in its place

    Professor Charles Langmuir worked for 10 years on an update of “How to Build a Habitable Planet,” a textbook published in 1985 by famed geoscientist Wallace Broecker.

  • Campus & Community

    Coming back, looking forward

    Members of Harvard’s Corporation and Board of Overseers, past and present, gathered at Harvard Law School’s new Wasserstein Hall Sept. 22 for a reunion afternoon featuring a panel discussion on teaching innovation and a question-and-answer session with Harvard President Drew Faust.

  • Science & Tech

    An invasion of New England

    While new species naturally expand to other places and sometimes disrupt the scene when they arrive, the pace of introduction of invasive species has picked up enormously over the past century and a half, stressing and transforming New England forests.

  • Science & Tech

    Managing just fine

    Measurements of stress hormones and self-reports of anxiety show that leaders in stable organizations experience less stress than their subordinates, likely because they have greater control over their office lives.

  • Nation & World

    A firm voice on Europe

    Jan Fischer, former PM and current presidential candidate in the Czech Republic, talked to a Harvard audience about the debt crisis and the possibility of a full European federation.

  • Health

    For a health reform model, try Brazil

    Scholars and public health experts gathered at the Harvard School of Public Health to examine Brazil’s progress toward meeting the United Nations’ Millennium Development goals, and to see if there are lessons that can be applied to other countries.

  • Science & Tech

    Spoiled opportunity

    Republican objections to a climate change “tax” have stained the cap-and-trade approach to tackling climate change, making it politically unpalatable, even though it proved effective at fighting acid rain over the past two decades.

  • Science & Tech

    Emergency planning

    Six of Harvard’s deep thinkers on climate change and sustainability took the stage Sept. 18 in the second annual Harvard Thinks Green.

  • Nation & World

    A warning from inside Tunisia

    A Tunisian constitutional expert said Sept. 17 that recent violence, coupled with moves by the ruling Islamist Ennahda party to enshrine religion in the nation’s new constitution, are a bad sign for a pluralistic, democratic future.

  • Nation & World

    After 9/11, health lessons ignored

    The public health lessons of 9/11 and subsequent anthrax attacks haven’t been learned, said Pulitzer Prize-winning author Laurie Garrett during a talk at the Harvard School of Public Health.

  • Science & Tech

    Capturing the stars

    Alex Parker, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, sees astronomical data as art as well as science.

  • Health

    Tapping the body to fight disease

    Researcher Biju Parekkadan is developing devices that employ cell therapy to help people with organ failure.