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Campus & Community
Gore family values:
At the Askwith Education Forum at the Graduate School of Education (GSE) Friday (Dec. 6), Al Gore introduced himself as the former next president of the United States and closed with a cautious endorsement of the electoral college system that kept him from that post in 2000.
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Campus & Community
A letter from President Summers:
Dear Colleagues, I am writing to bring to your attention a Harvard initiative concerning scholars who face persecution…
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
Dec. 3, 1948 – The 110-member Harvard University Band makes its second appearance at Symphony Hall, Boston. The program features well-known marches and traditional band music, along with works by Leroy Anderson ’29, AM ’30. Midconcert finds the recently formed Krokodiloes taking center stage for a modern-jazz musical sketch sung with the help of Radcliffe…
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Campus & Community
‘Tis the season:
Lewie Remele 06 hangs holiday decorations inside his dorm room in Grays Hall.
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Campus & Community
Five Harvard students selected as 2003 Rhodes Scholars :
Thinking outside the box seems to have given Harvard students the edge in the Rhodes Scholarship competition this year. Four Harvard College students and one from the Medical School received the prestigious award – more than from any other school. All of them are pursuing academic careers that are interdisciplinary and unconventional.
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Campus & Community
Researchers debate origin of language:
If chickens could talk, would they have anything interesting to say? Most scholars think not. But Marc Hauser, a Harvard professor of psychology, disagrees with them.
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Health
Gene signature identifies leukemia patients who should avoid transplants
It was previously known that only slightly over half of the patients with adult T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) could be cured with chemotherapy. Adult ALL patients often undergo transplants in an effort to beat back the stubborn disease. Until now there was no way to identify those who have a more favorable outlook and…
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Science & Tech
Researchers regenerate zebrafish heart muscle
A research team led by Mark T. Keating showed that zebrafish can regenerate heart muscle within two months after a severe injury. The team, from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Children’s Hospital Boston, also identified a possible genetic and molecular model for regeneration in zebrafish that could help direct further research in humans. The…
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Science & Tech
Where do you want your building?
Humans are changing location more frequently and in greater numbers than ever before in history. But at the same time, the electronic revolution is allowing them to remain in contact with one another to an extent undreamed of only a few decades ago. How does that development affect the concept of architecture? Jennifer Siegal has…
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Campus & Community
Students engaged but skeptical, survey says
“Contrary to popular belief, college students are engaged in their community and tuned into current events,” said Dan Glickman, director of Harvard’s Institute of Politics and a former U.S. Cabinet secretary and member of Congress. “But it is little wonder that they feel disengaged from politics when the campaigns focus most of their attention on…
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Health
Risk of stroke from obesity is now measurable
While it has been suspected for some time that being overweight could potentially increase a person’s chances of a stroke, a study published in the Dec. 9, 2002, issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine offers some of the first concrete evidence that as a man’s weight increases, so do his chances of suffering from…
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Health
Chlamydia pneumoniae may contribute to heart attacks, strokes
Murat Kalayoglu of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Peter Libby of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Gerald Byrne of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center searched MEDLINE and considered online resources, texts, meeting abstracts, and expert opinion for the association between Chlamydia pneumoniae and atherosclerosis. They included five types of studies and…
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Health
Hormone replacement therapy may lower degenerative eye disease risk in postmenopausal women
ARM is a degenerative eye disease that affects the macula, which is responsible for central vision, which is necessary for reading, driving and recognizing people’s faces. Advanced ARM is the leading cause of irreversible blindness among elderly individuals worldwide. Approximately 1.7 million people have decreased vision due to ARM, and 200,000 people develop advanced ARM…
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Campus & Community
Building circuits measured in molecules
Yu Huang, a doctoral student in Professor Charles Lieber’s lab, has used fluid flows to arrange tiny bits of wires that are just billionths of a meter wide into millimeter-long lengths. By switching the direction of subsequent flows, Huang has been able to create grids of these wires that could function as electronic circuits. The…
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Science & Tech
Matthew Shair imitates, improves on nature
Matthew Shair and his students work in “protein trafficking.” Genes in living cells carry instructions for making proteins essential to life. These proteins have to get from place to place in the cells and to destinations outside the cells. It’s like traffic on a busy freeway. The problem Shair set for himself was to find…
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Science & Tech
Researchers debate origin of language
Birds sing, chimps grunt, and whales whistle, but those sounds fall far short of expressing the richness of their experiences. Their lack of language goes to the question of why humans have it but no other animals do. That question in turn leads to two major theories of the origin of language. One is the…
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Health
Physicians say they have personally experienced medical errors
A nationwide survey examined the views of 831 physicians in April-July 2002 and 1,207 adults in April-June 2002. Some 42 percent of the public and more than one-third of U.S. doctors say they or their family members have experienced medical errors in the course of receiving medical care. “One of the striking findings of this…
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Health
New drug combination may prevent dangerous complication of bone marrow transplantation
An ongoing clinical study by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists suggests that a three-drug therapy, which includes a novel medication called sirolimus, reduces graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) in stem cell transplant patients more effectively and with less toxicity than traditional treatments. The study seeks to produce better outcomes for patients receiving stem cell transplants for diseases such…
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Health
Study of phthalate exposure in humans finds association with sperm DNA damage
Phthalates are a class of compounds used to hold color and scent in many cosmetics and personal care items such as soaps, detergents, skin preparations and aftershave lotions, and they also find their way into food through packaging materials. Di-ethylhexyl phthalate, one form of phthalate, is used to soften a wide range of plastic goods,…
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Science & Tech
New 3-D mammography system may improve breast imaging
Researcher Elizabeth Rafferty of the Massachusetts General Hospital Breast Imaging Service described initial results of a study comparing a new technique, called digital tomosynthesis, to standard mammography. Among the new technique’s advantages is a significant reduction in false positive test results. “The overlap of breast structures presents a major challenge for radiologists, both because these…
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Health
Scientists discover gene “signature” for tumor’s tendency to spread
Most cancer deaths are caused not by the original or primary tumor but by the metastasizing of tumor cells to other organs. Until now, cancer specialists have viewed the development of metastasis as an essentially random and unpredictable event. But that notion is thrown into question with the new finding of a genetic “signature” –-…
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Campus & Community
Robert Clark to conclude service as HLS dean
Robert C. Clark will conclude his service as dean of Harvard Law School at the end of the 2002-03 academic year, he announced Nov. 25.
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Campus & Community
Hewlett awards $1.25 million for library’s ‘Open Collections’:
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation of Menlo Park, Calif., has awarded $1.25 million to the Harvard University Library (HUL) to support the librarys Open Collections program. The new, Harvard-wide program reflects the Universitys long-term commitment to the creation of comprehensive, subject-based digital resources that link throughout the Harvard library system. Once created, these new…
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Campus & Community
‘Lois Orswell, David Smith, and Modern Art’ offers fresh focus
Showing visitors around the Fogg Art Museums current exhibit Lois Orswell, David Smith, and Modern Art, curator Marjorie Cohn pauses at a brass sculpture by Eduardo Paolozzi. Lois kept this in her garden, explains Cohn, the Foggs Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints, and a wasps nest was discovered in it while mounting the sculpture…
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Campus & Community
Avalanche takes life of Radcliffe’s Sandberg
The environment was his passion, both professionally and privately. Scott Sandberg, 32, a building services coordinator for four years at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, was killed Friday (Nov. 29) in a surprise avalanche at Tuckerman Ravine on New Hampshires Mount Washington.
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Campus & Community
Rudge Green Prize goes Dutch:
If the Harvard Gazette ever decides to send me to Amsterdam as a correspondent for Dutch affairs, I want to live in the Borneo Sporenburg residential development.
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Campus & Community
Goldin discusses impact of oral contraceptives on gender equality in the workplace
What is the hidden factor behind the gains women have made in the labor market since the 1970s? Claudia Goldin believes its the birth control pill.
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Campus & Community
Vanderbilt bite:
Hitting the hardwood running, the Harvard womens basketball team – picked by the pundits as the official team to beat in the Ivies – took its first spill of the season on Dec. 1, dropping a 84-44 decision to No. 7 Vanderbilt. Playing in the title game of the First Tennessee Tournament in Nashville, the…
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Campus & Community
Newsmakers
HBS professor named book prize recipient The Harriman Institute at Columbia University has named Rawi Abdelal, assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, the recipient of the 2002 Marshall Shulman Book Prize. Abdelal received the prize for “National Purpose in the World Economy: Post-Soviet States in Comparative Perspective” – his work on the…
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Campus & Community
Colombian vice president visits Harvard:
Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers met with Francisco Santos, vice president of Colombia, on Nov. 22. Santos (seated) signs the guest book in Massachusetts Hall as Summers looks on. (Staff photo by Kris Snibbe)