Tag: Harvard

  • Health

    Why birds don’t crash

    A new study shows that birds use two highly stereotyped postures to avoid obstacles in flight. The study could open the door to new ways to program drones and other unmanned aerial vehicles to avoid similar obstacles.

  • Campus & Community

    A new fiscal leader

    Thomas J. Hollister, a business executive with expertise in global financial management and banking, has been named Harvard’s chief financial officer and vice president for finance.

  • Campus & Community

    A freshman reflects

    A Harvard College freshman reflects on a year of people, professors, pacing, and appreciating.

  • Science & Tech

    A leap for ‘artificial leaf’

    Using an electro-chemical process to etch materials, Harvard scientists have developed a system of patterning that works in just minutes, as opposed to the weeks needed for other techniques. Researchers can build photonic structures that control the light hitting the device and greatly increase its efficiency.

  • Campus & Community

    For those with a head for history

    A sample in images from the abundance of hats — Panama, pillbox, porkpie, and more — in Harvard’s holdings.

  • Campus & Community

    Three faculty members receive NAS awards

    Catherine Dulac, Hopi Hoekstra, and Xiaowei Zhuang have received National Academy of Sciences awards.

  • Science & Tech

    When flames attack

    Harvard researchers were able to predict when test flames in the lab were likely to switch from slow- to fast-moving fires, which could open the way to making similar predictions for forest fires.

  • Health

    Mystery motor

    Harvard researchers have solved the mystery of how some bacteria move across surfaces with the discovery of a rotary motor in the bacterium Flavobacterium johnsoniae.

  • Science & Tech

    Understanding common knowledge

    A new study examines how different kinds of shared beliefs can affect how people cooperate, and how people use common knowledge, a type of shared understanding, to coordinate their actions.

  • Campus & Community

    A distinctive honor

    Sixty-three Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) employees from 36 departments — representing 2.5 percent of the FAS staff — were recognized at the sixth annual awards ceremony and reception, held in the faculty room of University Hall.

  • Health

    The teeth tell a tale

    A new study shows that the teeth of early hominins grew unlike those of either modern humans or apes, suggesting that neither can serve as a useful proxy for estimating the age or developmental progression of juvenile fossils.

  • Campus & Community

    Crowd of Fulbrights

    For the second year in a row, Harvard is the leading producer of Fulbright Scholars, with 34 students ― 22 from the College, 12 in total from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Law School, Graduate School of Design, and Graduate School of Education — receiving the prestigious grants.

  • Health

    March mammal madness

    An assistant professor of evolutionary biology, Katie Hinde is also the creator of Mammal March Madness, a tournament that emulates the college basketball playoffs and pits species against each other in simulated combat.

  • Health

    A new understanding of Alzheimer’s

    Using the principle of natural selection, researchers have outlined a new model of the disease suggesting that mitochondria — power plants for cells — might be at its center.

  • Science & Tech

    Playing the ‘envelope game’

    Harvard researchers have developed a first-of-its-kind model, dubbed the “envelope game,” that can help researchers to understand not only why humans evolved to be cooperative but why people evolved to cooperate in a principled way.

  • Arts & Culture

    A.O. Scott reviews himself

    In a question-and-answer interview, New York Times film critic and Harvard alumnus A.O. Scott explains his craft, and how he came to it.

  • Campus & Community

    Snow way this continues

    Around Harvard these days, the talk among administrators and facilities managers isn’t about the last snowstorm, as punishing it was. And it isn’t about the one before that, or the one before that. It’s about the next one.

  • Health

    Walk like a man

    The fossilized hipbone of an ape called Sivapithecus is raising a host of new questions about whether the upright body plan of apes may have evolved multiple times.

  • Campus & Community

    Hamburger receives Anneliese Maier Research Award

    Jeffrey Hamburger, the Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture and a world authority on the religious art of the Middle Ages, is among this year’s recipients of the Anneliese Maier Research Award.

  • Campus & Community

    Exploration, transformation

    The fifth annual Harvard College Wintersession featured a host of events, from print-making on clay tablets to yoga classes to programming featuring prominent alumni.

  • Campus & Community

    Beyond the lab and library

    For the past seven years, January has been a time when students in Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences can delve into topics they might not otherwise have the chance to explore — everything from the mating habits of insects to writing grant proposals to various imaging techniques.

  • Health

    Sounding out speech

    A new study demonstrates that infants as young as 6 months can solve the invariance problem in speech perception.

  • Health

    A cost of culture

    A new study, authored by Collin McCabe, a doctoral student in Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, suggests that increased exposure to disease has played an important role in the evolution of culture in both humans and non-human primates.

  • Health

    Reproductive strategies

    When compared with a solitary strategy of producing offspring who then go on to produce their own offspring, a new Harvard study has found that eusociality is a high-risk, high-reward gamble.

  • Science & Tech

    Grace Hopper, computing pioneer

    Author Walter Isaacson’s new book is “The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution.” Here is an excerpt about computing pioneer Grace Hopper from his book.

  • Campus & Community

    Oxford and beyond

    Rhodes Scholars Ruth Fong and Benjamin Sprung-Keyser both are driven by a desire to improve the world around them.

  • Campus & Community

    Two Harvard undergrads named Rhodes Scholars

    Two Harvard undergraduates, Ruth Fong and Benjamin Sprung-Keyser, are among the 32 American men and women chosen as Rhodes Scholars on Saturday. They will begin their studies at the University of Oxford next October.

  • Health

    How mosquitoes home in

    A team of researchers has identified a key genetic variation that helps mosquitoes “smell” humans. The study could open the door to new strategies to ward off the pests.

  • Campus & Community

    A lifetime of scholarship, recognized

    Steven Shapin, the Franklin L. Ford Research Professor in the History of Science, whose scholarship has had a wide-reaching impact on both the history and sociology of science, has been awarded the 2014 Sarton Medal for Lifetime Scholarly Achievement by the History of Science Society.

  • Campus & Community

    Funding the next generation of scholars

    Twenty undergraduates from around the world will have the chance to get hands-on experience in Harvard labs this summer, thanks to a four-year renewable grant to expand the Amgen Scholars Program to the University.