Featured series 
Tag: Innovation
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Nation & World
New Trajectories: contemporary architecture in Croatia and Slovenia
For young architects, the moment their country is dissolving may not be a bad time to launch their careers. That has to be one of the takeaway messages from “New Trajectories: Contemporary Architecture in Croatia and Slovenia,” an exhibition at the Gund Hall Gallery of the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) through Oct. 5.
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Nation & World
Ash Institute honors city, state, federal programs with Innovations Awards
The Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) recently announced the winners of the 2008 Innovations in American Government Awards. These six government initiatives — consisting of one city, three state, and two federal programs — were recently honored at an awards gala and reception at the U.S. Chamber of…
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Nation & World
Ash Institute awards grants to Harvard Kennedy School faculty, students
The Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) recently announced its faculty and student summer grant recipients for the 2008 academic year. The institute will fund four summer 2008 independent student research grants, two student Ash Summer Fellowships in Innovation, and five faculty research grants. Such grants are part of…
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Nation & World
Ash Institute names top innovations in government
The Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) recently announced the Top 50 programs of the 2008 Innovations in American Government Awards competition.
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Nation & World
Ash Institute announces system reform semifinalists
Earlier this month, the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) announced eight semifinalists for the 2008 Annie E. Casey Innovations Award in Children and Family System Reform.
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Nation & World
Provost’s Fund for technology seeks proposals
The Office of the Provost makes funds available to faculty for University projects that promise to alter and improve teaching and learning through the use of technology. The Provost’s Instructional Technology Fund is made up of two funds: the Innovation Fund and the Content Fund. The Innovation Fund is for large-scale projects that propose to…
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Nation & World
The hidden resources of ‘the extended piano’
Brian Kane’s composition “Another Cascando” sounds a bit like barking dogs at a construction site; Johannes Kreidler’s “Piano Piece #5” is reminiscent of distant artillery fire; and Hans Tutschku’s “Zellen – Linien” seems to include the sharp, high-pitched sounds of breaking glass.
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Nation & World
Engineered weathering process could mitigate global warming
Researchers at Harvard University and Pennsylvania State University have invented a technology, inspired by nature, to reduce the accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by human emissions.
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Nation & World
Steven Pinker’s ‘Ideas on the Fringe’
Not long ago, Steven Pinker appeared on “The Colbert Report.” He managed to explain the functioning of the human brain to Stephen Colbert in only five words: “Brain cells fire in patterns.”
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Nation & World
Panel investigates media reporting on science and politics of stem cells
Stem cells, politics, “fairness,” and what one participant termed “the disintegration of traditional journalism,” were all on the bill at Thursday night’s (Oct. 18) public forum titled “Stem Cells and the Media,” hosted by the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.
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Nation & World
Joseph Vacanti wins 2007 John Scott Medal
Acting for the city of Philadelphia, the board of directors of city trusts has awarded John Homans Professor of Surgery Joseph P. Vacanti the 2007 John Scott Medal. The award is given to men and women whose inventions have contributed in some outstanding way to the “comfort, welfare, and happiness” of mankind.
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Nation & World
‘Ethiojazz’ sets feet to tapping
A masinko is about as simple as a stringed instrument can get — a wooden box with a neck protruding from one corner and a single string stretched across its face. The one Setegn Atanaw plays is the amplified version, airbrushed in red and yellow like a Fender Stratocaster.
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Nation & World
Taking distance education to the next level
A major advance in distance education was initiated this fall in a specially equipped classroom at the Harvard Extension School. Classes held there give online students the ability to view on-campus lectures in real-time and actually take part in classroom discussions. The facility also serves as an experimental locus to test distance education teaching methods…
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Nation & World
Seven outstanding programs honored as innovations in U.S. government
The Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government on Sept. 25 announced seven state, city, and local government programs as winners of the 2007 Innovations in American Government Awards. The winners were honored at the Innovations in American Government Awards 20th anniversary reception at the U.S.…
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Nation & World
‘Hot’ ice could lead to medical device
Harvard physicists have shown that specially treated diamond coatings can keep water frozen at body temperature, a finding that may have applications in future medical implants.
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Nation & World
Scientists synthesize memory in yeast cells
Harvard Medical School (HMS) researchers have successfully synthesized a DNA-based memory loop in yeast cells, an experiment that marks a significant step forward in the emerging field of synthetic biology.
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Nation & World
New leadership fellowship program established
A core of 13 faculty members is collaborating across disciplines to create a new Harvard fellowship program they say will harness a largely untapped universe of leadership skills.
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Nation & World
Elkan R. Blout
In the world of scientific research and development, few investigators could be considered “renaissance” persons, capable of seemingly integrating the various realms of this world – – industry, academe, government and public service. Elkan Blout was such a renaissance person.
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Nation & World
Jackson raps abundance of ‘experts’
In 1973, Shirley Ann Jackson became the first black woman to receive a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Decades – and 38 honorary degrees – later, Jackson is the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York. Her resume includes time as a university researcher (in theoretical elementary particle physics);…
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Nation & World
Light and matter united
Lene Hau has already shaken scientists’ beliefs about the nature of things. Albert Einstein and just about every other physicist insisted that light travels 186,000 miles a second in free space, and that it can’t be speeded-up or slowed down. But in 1998, Hau, for the first time in history, slowed light to 38 miles…
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Nation & World
Measuring one of the universe’s building blocks
Only a few people think deeply about electrons. One is Gerald Gabrielse, Leverett Professor of Physics at Harvard University. In the past 20 years, he has discovered new things about them, things that even Albert Einstein never knew. And he’s trained a half-dozen young Ph.D.s in the business of how subatomic particles make the universe…