Featured series 
Tag: Engineering & Technology
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Nation & World
Harvard turns wind into power
Watch your footing on those slippery winter sidewalks in Cambridge. But if you’re at the corner of Dunster and Mt. Auburn streets, take a minute to look up.
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Nation & World
Exotic force seen for first time
For the first time, researchers have measured a long-theorized force that operates at distances so tiny they’re measured in billionths of a meter, which may have important applications in nanotechnology as scientists and engineers seek new ways to create devices too small for the eye to see.
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Nation & World
New ID card distribution through February
Continuing through the early winter of 2009, Harvard is distributing new, high-technology ID cards to the University community. The Harvard ID card is used in more than 400 systems across campus, and the new card will make those systems more secure by segregating key information and encrypting it in card-based technologies that are unique to…
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Nation & World
Q&A with Heather Henriksen
Gazette reporter Corydon Ireland recently had a conversation with Heather A. Henriksen, the director of Harvard’s new Office for Sustainability. Some highlights:
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Nation & World
Robotic radical hysterectomy has advantages
New technologies now allow surgery to be performed with less impact on patient quality of life. As the trend toward minimally invasive surgery grows, robotic-assisted surgery has become an appealing tool for gynecologic oncology surgeons. However, to date, there is little data to confirm the benefits of this technology. New research from Brigham and Women’s…
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Nation & World
Modeling the forest … and the trees
When building computer models of the ecosystems that cover the earth’s surface, it is tempting to incorporate sweeping generalizations in your calculations.
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Nation & World
New high-tech ID cards to be distributed around University
Beginning this week and continuing through the early winter of 2009, Harvard is distributing new, high-technology ID cards to the University community. The Harvard ID card is used in more than 400 systems across campus, and the new card will make those systems more secure by segregating key information and encrypting it in card-based technologies…
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Nation & World
Shai Agassi dreams of a gas-free future
Electric cars with zero emissions. Powered by renewable energy. All over the world. That is Shai Agassi’s dream. The 40-year-old Israeli entrepreneur left a lucrative corporate software track last year to found Better Place, a transportation company based on sustainability and independence from oil.
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Nation & World
Patricia Cornwell endows conservationist at Straus Center
Harvard Art Museum announced the establishment of the Patricia Cornwell Conservation Scientist position at the museum’s Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies. Funded by a $1 million commitment from best-selling author Patricia Cornwell, the Cornwell Conservation Scientist will play a key role in the analytical laboratory and beyond.
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Nation & World
Money Mondays to help staff
The Office of Human Resources will be offering a special series of “HARVie chats” on banking, benefits, investing, and other financial topics. Harvard staff are invited to visit http://harvie.harvard.edu/chats/upcomingchats.shtml to get information that may help in navigating through the current economic downturn.
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Nation & World
Rolf Mowatt-Larssen named senior fellow at Belfer Center
Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, director of the Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence at the U.S. Department of Energy and former head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) and terrorism efforts, will join the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs as a senior fellow on Jan. 19.
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Nation & World
Harvard launches redesigned Web site
Harvard University has a newer and shinier Web presence. The easily accessible and eminently navigable Web site has a clean, bold, handsome design.
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Nation & World
Students looking to light African night
Some current and former Harvard students have joined forces in an effort to apply new technology to an old problem: how to light Africa’s rural areas far from modern power supplies.
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Nation & World
Woolsey: New technologies will make need for oil obsolete
Salt was once highly valued as a preservative for meat, but eventually a new technology — refrigeration — greatly reduced its value. Today, rather than a contentious commodity, salt is a humdrum condiment.
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Nation & World
Quantum computers could excel in modeling chemical reactions
Quantum computers would likely outperform conventional computers in simulating chemical reactions involving more than four atoms, according to scientists at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Haverford College. Such improved ability to model and predict complex chemical reactions could revolutionize drug design and materials science, among other fields.
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Nation & World
Astronomy Department dedicates new telescope
A small knot of a dozen people gathered on the Science Center roof on Friday (Oct. 31) to officially dedicate Harvard’s latest teaching telescope, a 16-inch cassegrain telescope built by DFM Engineering in Colorado.
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Nation & World
How the ‘talking machine’ allowed music and dance to cross oceans
In the late 1920s, with the advent of new technology, gramophone and “talking machine” companies were able to capture the sounds and rhythms of life in cities across the globe. From New York to Havana, Paris to Honolulu, labels like Victor, Gramophone Company, and Okeh competed to record vernacular music.
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Nation & World
Clarke, inventive materials scientist, to join Harvard’s SEAS faculty
David R. Clarke, an inventive materials scientist recognized worldwide for his outstanding contributions to the study of ceramic materials, has been named Gordon McKay Professor of Materials in Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), effective Jan. 1, 2009.
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Nation & World
Hu named professor of applied physics, electrical engineering
Evelyn L. Hu, a pioneer in the fabrication of nanoscale electronic and photonic devices, has been named Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering in Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), effective Jan. 1, 2009.
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Nation & World
Lecture ‘Can’t you see I’m busy’ addresses ‘interruption management’
You’ve opened a Microsoft Word document and are just about to write. Feel good? No. Instead of inspiration, along comes Clippy, the annoying little pop-up man with his bobbing eyebrows and balloon full of intrusive questions. “It looks like you’re writing a letter. Would you like help?”
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Nation & World
Controlling greenhouse gases, universities, individuals matter
From 1850 to 2000, the use of fossil fuels worldwide grew 140-fold, a practice that has gradually filled the Earth’s atmosphere with warming gases.
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Nation & World
MessageMe system to be tested Oct. 23
The University will test its emergency text-messaging system, MessageMe, on Oct. 23. A test message will be broadcast midday to more than 14,000 Harvard community members who have signed up for the alert system.
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Nation & World
Kuwait Program accepting grant proposals
The Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) has announced the 15th funding cycle for the Kuwait Program Research Fund, which is supported by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS). An HKS faculty committee will consider applications for one-year grants (up to $30,000) and larger grants for more extensive proposals to support advanced research by…
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Nation & World
Belfer Center’s new fellows to focus on energy policy, Dubai Initiative
The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) has announced the following new 2008-09 research fellows. These fellows will conduct research within the Belfer Center’s Energy Technology Innovation Policy (ETIP) research project and Dubai Initiative.
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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
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
Theme of Ig Nobels: Redundancy redundancy
The 18th First Annual Ig Nobel winners will be showered with applause and paper airplanes at Sanders Theatre on Thursday (Oct. 2). Traveling from four continents, the 10 award recipients will be honored for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.”