Featured series 
Tag: Alvin Powell
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Health
Taking the long way home
A Harvard graduate student has shown that some Australian and Pacific Island daddy longlegs took an unusual path to their new homes: drifting from the Americas and then island-hopping to their new continental home in Australia.
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Science & Tech
A forest washing into the sea
Harvard researchers probe environmental shifts on Martha’s Vineyard, where they document one wooded area’s recovery from a massive die-off and another’s passage into the ocean.
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Health
What makes a worm say ‘yuck’
Researchers at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital have uncovered a new way that animals detect pathogens, by detecting disruptions of critical cellular processes.
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Health
Thinking about health as an investor might
A “proof-of-concept” study that applies financial portfolio theory to federal life science research funding shows that potentially significant gains are available by altering the allocation of funding by the National Institutes of Health.
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Science & Tech
The whys of religion vs. evolution
University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne says that dysfunction within American society promotes high levels of religious belief that in turn blocks general acceptance of evolutionary theories.
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Health
Cutting calories before cutting in surgery
Strongly restricted diets have already been shown to increase longevity and prolong one’s healthy years, but research highlighted at a Harvard Global Health Institute symposium at the Harvard School of Public Health shows that the benefits of such restriction may extend to more rapid recovery from surgery and an improved ability to fight disease.
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Health
A training lifeline for rescuers
The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative has launched a new academy to formalize instruction in international disaster response, with the aim of saving the lives of those threatened by earthquakes, floods, wars, and other catastrophes.
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Science & Tech
Rules of attraction
Nicholas Christakis, whose research explores how everything from obesity to smoking to happiness spreads among our social networks, is turning his attention to the past, exploring why and how we became the social animals we are.
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Science & Tech
From Iraq and back, via 9/11 and Harvard
A Harvard authority on ancient Iraq spent several years studying clay tablets looted from that nation, which had been stored in a World Trade Center building that was destroyed on 9/11. The tablets eventually were retrieved, restored, translated, and returned.
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Campus & Community
Preacher, scholar, friend
Jonathan Walton, a professor of religion and society specializing in the effects of media and technology on religion, is looking forward to his new role as Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church.
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Science & Tech
Barbecue’s beginnings
Steven Raichlen, author of “The Barbecue Bible” and “Planet Barbecue,” discussed on barbecue’s origins among early humans and barbecue customs around the world in a recent Harvard talk.
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Science & Tech
Earth’s sister in the crosshairs
A new book by Harvard astronomer Dimitar Sasselov explains the revolution in understanding the universe that views life as a natural part of planetary evolution and that has researchers on the brink of finding worlds that echo this one.
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Health
Beyond the ivory tower, into the world
The Harvard School of Public Health’s Division of Policy Translation and Leadership Development seeks to give faculty the tools to create broad change and to connect global leaders with the School’s research to improve conditions on the ground.
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Health
The future of self-knowledge
Anne Wojcicki, chief executive officer and co-founder of 23andMe, talked about growth in personal genomics in an event sponsored by the Program on Science, Technology and Society.
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Health
Survival of the selfless
In a talk sponsored by the Harvard Museum of Natural History, biologist E.O. Wilson said that competition among groups of humans is a likely explanation for the rise of altruistic behavior in individuals.
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Science & Tech
Making drinking water clean
Free water purification is needed to head off more than a million childhood deaths from diarrhea each year, says Gates Professor of Developing Societies Michael Kremer.
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Campus & Community
Building endurance, step by step
Harvard Stadium is an iconic structure, and not just for the sports that happen on the field. To a community dedicated to running “the stadium steps,” the real athletes are in the stands.
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Science & Tech
Technology transforms energy outlook
The U.S. energy picture has changed dramatically in recent years, with a flood of shale gas making natural gas a more attractive fuel option and the opening of new supplies cutting U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil, an energy expert says.
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Health
2009 flu could have echoed 1918
David Butler-Jones, Canada’s chief public health officer, believes that the relatively mild 2009 global flu outbreak might have been as deadly as the 1918 Spanish flu that killed millions, if not for improved scientific, public health, and medical practices.
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Nation & World
Disaster by the numbers
Reported natural disasters are up dramatically since 1950, with more lives damaged by homelessness and injury, even as modern medical care and improved disaster response have reduced the number of lives lost, an authority on global disaster data says.
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Science & Tech
Bubble, bubble — without toil or trouble
Among the advances linked to Harvard is one that came in a field not normally associated with the University: the culinary arts. Cooks use a professor’s 1850s invention, baking powder, as a time-saving replacement for yeast.
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Campus & Community
Pinker explains ‘The Long Peace’
As part of the John Harvard Book Celebration, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker brought the findings from his latest book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” to the Allston community, presenting his findings on how the world is growing less violent.
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Campus & Community
Pulling together for a better Harvard
President of the Harvard Board of Overseers Leila Fawaz and Senior Fellow of the Harvard Corporation Robert Reischauer sat down with the Gazette recently to discuss the University’s governance, the interplay between the University’s two governing boards, and the experience of serving.
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Health
Pondering health, at home and abroad
The world is in the midst of a global health transition, with the population growing older and primary health threats coming from chronic, not infectious, diseases, according to speakers at an Advanced Leadership Initiative think tank.
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Nation & World
Japan’s mistakes
Assurances of the safety of Japan’s nuclear industry lulled the government and the public into a false sense of security that was shattered a year ago when a massive earthquake and tsunami rocked the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the head of a panel that reviewed the disaster told a Harvard audience March 26.
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Campus & Community
Eyes on the future
Harvard’s 30-member Board of Overseers works to ensure Harvard’s tradition of excellence is carried into the future.
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Science & Tech
In a drying Amazon, change looms
If the Amazon becomes drier, as predicted by climate models, the forest will see a shift toward tree species that are drought tolerant and, in some cases, will lead to a savannah’s mix of trees and grasses, Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor Guillermo Goldstein says.
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Science & Tech
‘A timeout from your regular life’
Scientist Benny Shilo left his developmental biology lab to spend a year as a fellow at Radcliffe, where he explores the intersection of art and science to foster greater public understanding.
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Health
Whirlybirds and maple syrup
Perhaps botany, not boxing, is the real sweet science. Harvard Forest researchers are seeking to illuminate maple tree dynamics, investigating a possible link between autumn “mast seeding” and the sugar content of spring sap.
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Science & Tech
To help the environment, manufacture
An American manufacturing revival is needed if the United States is to transform its energy mix at the scale necessary to blunt coming climate change, the former chairman of the Sierra Club said in a Harvard University Center for the Environment discussion on the future of energy.
