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Campus & Community
Summer in the city, sort of
A College senior interns on an urban farm, and learns to grow friendships as well as crops.
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Campus & Community
A boost for managing cities
A $32 million gift from Michael Bloomberg’s charitable foundation will support a new four-year collaboration with Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School to help hundreds of city mayors and their top staff members make government more responsive and effective for its citizens.
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Health
Harvard researchers pinpoint enzyme that triggers cell demise in ALS
Scientists from Harvard Medical School (HMS) have identified a key instigator of nerve cell damage in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a progressive and incurable neurodegenerative disorder.
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Science & Tech
The first autonomous, entirely soft robot
Developed by a team of Harvard researchers, the first autonomous, entirely soft robot is powered by a chemical reaction controlled by microfluidics. The 3-D-printed “octobot” has no electronics.
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Campus & Community
The Yard awakens as freshmen arrive
After nearly 13 weeks of summer quiet, Harvard Yard awoke again as the Class of 2020 officially arrived on campus this morning.
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Health
Finding biological barcodes
Two recent studies have shown that cells early in development can be marked with a genetic barcode that later can be used to reconstruct their lineage.
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Science & Tech
Exoplanet might have oxygen atmosphere, but not life
Researchers believe they may for the first time detect oxygen on a rocky planet outside the solar system.
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Arts & Culture
Ahead of Bauhaus centennial, a digital gateway
Some of the groundwork for a planned 2019 exhibit on Harvard and the Bauhaus has already found a place online.
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Campus & Community
Science lesson brings sweet rewards
Harvard’s “Science and Cooking for Kids” program showed local children the snap behind the chocolate and the role chemistry plays in the process.
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Science & Tech
‘Smoke waves’ will affect millions in coming decades
Wildfires threaten more than land and homes. The smoke they produce contains fine particles (PM2.5) that can poison the air for hundreds of miles. Air pollution from the 2016 Fort McMurray fire in northern Alberta, Canada, sent people as far away as Michigan to the hospital with respiratory illnesses. As wildfires increase in frequency and…
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Nation & World
National parks at a turning point
The Kennedy School’s Linda Bilmes took part in a centennial effort to identify goals and challenges for the national parks.
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Health
How the brain develops
In an effort to get a clearer picture of how the brain and the connections between its regions change throughout development, Harvard scientists and researchers from three other universities will share a $14 million grant to support one of the most comprehensive brain-imaging studies ever undertaken.
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Campus & Community
For journalism, the future is now
In a sign of the times, political technologist Nicco Mele is taking the helm at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy. In a Q&A session, he discusses the issues that he and his center will face.
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Arts & Culture
Beauty inside and out
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The rich legacy of Dumbarton Oaks exists as much in its spectacular gardens as in the pages of the rare books kept inside the historic home. The distinct beauty of both settings has provided inspiration and substance for the forthcoming book “The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century.” Led by…
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Science & Tech
Toward a better screen
Harvard researchers have designed more than 1,000 new blue-light-emitting molecules for organic light-emitting diodes that could dramatically improve displays for televisions, phones, tablets, and more.
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Campus & Community
New dean for Faculty of Medicine
George Q. Daley will become the next dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Harvard President Drew Faust and Provost Alan Garber announced.
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Health
Unsafe levels of toxic chemicals found in drinking water of 33 states
A Harvard Chan School study has found that drinking-water samples near industrial sites, military fire-training areas, and wastewater-treatment plants have the highest levels of fluorinated compounds, which have been linked with cancer, hormone disruption, high cholesterol, and obesity.
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Science & Tech
Resolving conflict: Men vs. women
Using videos of four sports in 44 countries, researchers found that men are far more likely to engage in friendly physical contact — handshakes, back pats and even hugs — following competition than women are.
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Science & Tech
Calculating the odds of life between the Big Bang and the final fade
The universe is 13.8 billion years old, but our planet formed just 4.5 billion years ago. Some scientists think this time gap means that life on other planets could be billions of years older than ours. However, new theoretical work suggests that life on Earth is actually premature from a cosmic perspective. “If you ask,…
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Science & Tech
Design for movement
GSD architecture graduate Lauren Friedrich, M.Arch. ’16, looks at how architecture can better support health by providing unexpected physical challenges and minor obstacles rather than always prioritizing ease and comfort.
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Nation & World
Harvard professor creates a course for the world
In this edition of EdCast, Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor Fernando Reimers gives insight into a curriculum designed to empower all citizens of the world through his new book, “Empowering Global Citizens: A World Course.”
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Science & Tech
New way to model molecules
Scientists from Harvard and Google have demonstrated for the first time that a quantum computer could be used to model the electron interactions in a complex molecule.
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Arts & Culture
The surprising women of Iran
Photojournalist Randy H. Goodman was America’s eyes during the Iran hostage Crisis in 1980. Now, after a return trip in 2015, her exhibit “Iran: Women Only” is on display at CGIS Knafel.
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Campus & Community
Harvard fencer heads for Olympics
There’s “no crying in baseball,” actor Tom Hanks famously quipped in the 1992 film “A League of Their Own,” but some fencers have been known to shed a tear. Just ask Eli Dershwitz. The Harvard undergraduate admits he has “teared up” while watching Team USA during the last three Olympic opening ceremonies. There’s a good…
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Arts & Culture
‘The Merchant’ in Venice
Venice marks the 500th anniversary of its Jewish ghetto with a staging of Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice” and a mock trial involving Ruth Bader Ginsberg, appealing its famous verdict.
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Campus & Community
Connecting with science
Students from the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing came to campus for an ice cream-oriented science lesson.
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Science & Tech
Between Cuba and Harvard, an uncommon garden
Historian Leida Fernandez-Prieto came to Cambridge to research a Cuban botanical garden with Harvard roots.
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Nation & World
Religion as social unifier
There are plenty of things that make it possible for humans to live in large groups and pack into cities. New building techniques and materials, for instance, allow construction of high-rise buildings; plumbing delivers clean, fresh water and sewage systems that help to prevent diseases. One factor, however, is rarely included on the list: having…
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Nation & World
MOOCs ahead
MOOCs (massive open online courses) have sparked explosive growth in both education and opportunity. Consider edX. Since this joint Harvard and MIT online platform launched in 2012, it has attracted more than 27 million course enrollments representing more than 8 million learners, uniting students all over the world with teachers and course material through lectures,…
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Nation & World
In Turkey, a struggle for normalcy
I arrived in Istanbul on July 8, planning to conduct a month of historical research for my upcoming senior thesis. A week later, Turkey was thrown into chaos after the violent failure of an apparent coup attempt. Since then, this country has been struggling to find its way back to normalcy, and so have I.…
