Featured series 
Tag: Research
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Nation & World
HSCI creates Web presence for research
The Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) and the Harvard Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC) have launched an online stem cell textbook that seeks to engage and inform the stem cell community as it presents up-to-date stem cell science in a format useful to scientists and students.
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Nation & World
Smoking, burning solid fuels in homes in China projected to cause millions of deaths
If current levels of smoking and of burning biomass and coal fuel in homes continues in China, researchers estimate that between 2003 and 2033, 65 million deaths will be attributed to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and 18 million deaths to lung cancer, accounting for 19 percent and 5 percent of all deaths in that…
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Nation & World
Star quest knowledge provides new view of ourselves
In a basement laboratory at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), surrounded by instruments built to detect the universe’s distant secrets, sits a machine that will help us look not outward to the stars, but inward at our own bodies.
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Nation & World
Power of the pen in early America
In 1747, three members of the Abenaki Native American tribe and their Mohawk ally posted a petition on a wall of an English fort in the Connecticut River Valley. The paper was small, but it spoke volumes.
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Nation & World
Milton Fund deadline Oct. 15
Voting faculty from all of Harvard’s Schools and the Junior Fellows of the Society of Fellows are eligible to apply for grants from the Milton Fund, which supports original research by Harvard faculty. Milton grants have enabled hundreds of Harvard faculty, particularly assistant professors, to explore new ideas and launch innovative projects, often shaping lifelong…
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Nation & World
Spend an ‘Evening with Champions’ Oct. 10-11
Top world skaters will skate for a cause this weekend (Oct. 10-11) when they gather at Bright Hockey Center for the Jimmy Fund’s annual “An Evening with Champions.” Hosted by 1992 Olympic silver medalist Paul Wylie ’90, the event has raised more than $2.4 million for the Jimmy Fund, which supports adult and pediatric cancer…
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Nation & World
Arctic ice is thinning steadily
There was a polar bear sighting at Harvard last week. At Pforzheimer House on Thursday (Oct. 2), global warming expert James J. McCarthy delivered a crisp summary of how fast ice is melting in the Arctic — and why we should care. The audience of 80 took in his companion slide show, including images of…
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Nation & World
HUHS Office of Alcohol & Other Drug Services named prevention leader
The Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) Office of Alcohol & Other Drug Services (AODS) was named this year’s “Outstanding Leader in Prevention” by the city of Cambridge. The award recognizes the Cambridge organization/agency that has provided Cambridge with superior service in the prevention of substance abuse.
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Nation & World
Program allows gifted scholars to kick back and … work
Abena Dove Osseo-Asare studies African medicinal plants, including their fate at the hands of modern science and global patent systems.
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Nation & World
The pine beetle’s tale: Destructive insect has pharmaceutical potential
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have discovered how beetles and bacteria form a symbiotic and mutualistic relationship — one that ultimately results in the destruction of pine forests. In addition, they’ve identified the specific molecule that drives this whole phenomenon.
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Nation & World
Harvard China Fund accepting 2010 proposals
The Harvard China Fund, under the Office of the Provost, has announced its fiscal year 2010 grants program for Harvard faculty, programs, and Schools. The purpose of the fund is to support interdisciplinary research and teaching in and about China, focus Harvard’s considerable strengths toward tackling the challenges that China faces, and improve communication and…
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Nation & World
Harvard-Yenching Institute names doctoral fellows
Initiated in the 1960s, the Harvard-Yenching Institute’s Doctoral Scholars Program (DSP) now consists of two branches, the Harvard-DSP and Non-Harvard DSP. Each year the institute invites Harvard departments in the humanities and social sciences to nominate candidates for the Harvard doctoral scholarships. To be eligible for this program, candidates must be from Asia.
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Nation & World
Key statistical ideas celebrate birthdays
University of Chicago statistics professor Stephen M. Stigler, a frequent visitor to Harvard, has a favorite movie — “Magic Town,” a black-and-white flick from 1947. It stars James Stewart as a pollster who discovers a magical place: a heartland town whose citizens have a range of opinions that are a near-perfect composite of the whole…
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Nation & World
Milton Fund offers unique opportunities for faculty
Voting faculty from all of Harvard’s Schools are eligible to apply for grants from the Milton Fund, which supports original research by Harvard faculty.
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Nation & World
Technique offers close-ups of electrons and nuclei
Providing a glimpse into the infinitesimal, physicists have found a novel way to spy on some of the universe’s tiniest building blocks. Their “camera,” described this week (Oct. 1) in the journal Nature, consists of a special “flaw” in diamonds that can be manipulated into sensitively monitoring magnetic signals from individual electrons and atomic nuclei…
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Nation & World
Herbert C. Kelman receives IPRA Peace Award
Herbert C. Kelman, the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics emeritus and co-chair of the Middle East seminar at Harvard University, has received the 2008 Peace Award from the International Peace Research Association (IPRA). The award, honoring the founders of peace research, was announced this past July at IPRA’s global conference in Leuven, Belgium.
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Nation & World
Financial risk-taking behavior is associated with higher testosterone
Higher levels of testosterone are correlated with financial risk-taking behavior, according to a new study in which men’s testosterone levels were assessed before participation in an investment game. The findings help to shed light on the evolutionary function and biological origins of risk taking.
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Nation & World
Advance in pluripotent cell creation
A team of Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) scientists has taken an important step toward producing induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that are safe to transplant into patients to treat diseases. Excitement over the ability of researchers to create this form of stem cell by inserting four genes into adult cells has thus far been…
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Nation & World
Dental School’s Goldhaber dies at 84
Paul W. Goldhaber, dean of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM) for 22 years, died this past July 14 from complications of pancreatic cancer. He was 84.
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Nation & World
New approach to gene therapy may shrink brain tumors, prevent their spread
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers are investigating a new approach to gene therapy for brain tumors — delivering a cancer-fighting gene to normal brain tissue around the tumor to keep it from spreading. An animal study described in the journal Molecular Therapy, the first study to test the feasibility of such an approach, found that…
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Nation & World
Lab aims to advance innovations in public education
A new education research and development laboratory at Harvard University will identify and advance strategies to improve student achievement in America’s public schools, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation announced Sept. 25 at the Clinton Global Initiative.
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Nation & World
Broad Institute gets major grant for epigenomics research
Researchers at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT announced Sept. 30 that they have received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to map the epigenomes of a variety of medically important cell types, including human embryonic stem cells.
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Nation & World
Seeing what they hear, to better understand ourselves
It was a long drive from St. Louis to Florida, but Darlene Ketten had finally made it. Standing in the warm surf of St. George Island, she watched with delight as tiny, colorful bean clams popped out of the sand and then quickly reburied themselves as the waves foamed around her calves.
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Nation & World
Health, rights journal open to all
December will mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a United Nations convention that in 30 articles memorializes basic freedoms involving speech, property, health, security, and the rule of law.
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Nation & World
Harvard Forest: 3,500 acres, global impact
Harvard may be rooted in Cambridge, but it has a lot more roots in the small north-central Massachusetts town of Petersham. That’s where you’ll find the woods, streams, and fields of the Harvard Forest, a 3,500-acre research and teaching facility that’s been part of the University for more than a century. Having been closely monitored…
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Nation & World
Thomas Weller, Nobel laureate, HSPH professor emeritus, dies at 93
Thomas H. Weller, a Nobel Prize winner in 1954 and Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) professor emeritus, passed away on Aug. 23. He was 93.
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Nation & World
HPV, cervical cancer link earns scientists Alpert Prize
Two scientists who discovered that specific types of human papillomavirus, or HPV, cause cancer of the cervix received the 20th annual Warren Alpert Foundation Scientific Prize on Sept. 15. As part of the day’s celebration, the prize winners Harald zur Hausen and Lutz Gissmann — both professors at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg…
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Nation & World
Scholars, officials welcomed as Mossavar-Rahmani Center fellows
A director of international banking for one of the top banks in Vietnam, a seasoned government relations executive, and the former deputy general counsel for National Grid are among the incoming fellows being welcomed this fall at Harvard Kennedy School’s (HKS) Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government.
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Nation & World
Susan E. Mango named professor of molecular and cellular biology
Susan E. Mango, whose study of pharynx development in nematode worms has provided biologists with one of their most robust models of organ development, has been named professor of molecular and cellular biology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), effective July 1, 2009. Mango, 46, was previously professor of oncological sciences at the…
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Nation & World
HSPH honors Bernard Lown
A professorship and scholarship program to honor the career of Bernard Lown in advancing public health is being established at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). School officials made the announcement Sept. 10.