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Campus & Community
In brief
BIG seeks applicants The Harvard-M.I.T. Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) has announced the creation of the Bioinformatics and Integrative Genomics (BIG) program, a new training program to provide students with in-depth education and research opportunities in the intersecting domains of quantitative techniques, biology, and genomics. The program provides qualified applicants with three years…
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Campus & Community
Newsmakers
Harvard fellow makes 2001 ‘best books’ list “How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World” (Stanford University Press, 2001), by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, a Charles Warren Center Fellow, has been cited among the best books of 2001 by the Times Literary Supplement, The Independent, and the…
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Campus & Community
Bringing Chinese to life
The good news is that the universe will last forever. The bad news is that we will be seeing less and less of it as galaxies fade and become frozen in time.
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Campus & Community
President holds office hours
President Lawrence H. Summers will hold office hours for students in his Massachusetts Hall office from 4 to 5 p.m. on the following dates: Feb. 1, 2002 March 5, 2002 April 10, 2002 May 8, 2002 In addition, office hours will be open to any employees of the University on the following dates: April 10,…
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Campus & Community
Police reports
Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending Saturday, Jan. 5. The official log is located at 29 Garden St.
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
January 1870 A statute creates and defines the Deanship of the College Faculty. History Professor Ephraim W. Gurney becomes the first incumbent this year and serves until 1876. Jan. 6, 1871 The Harvard Corporation votes to establish the nation¹s first professorship of political economy, to which Charles F. Dunbar, Class of 1851, is…
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Campus & Community
Faculty Council Notice for January 9, 2002
At its sixth meeting of the year, the Faculty Council heard (and viewed) a report on space planning in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences presented by Nancy Maull, executive dean of the faculty, and David Zewinski, associate dean of the faculty for Physical Resources and Planning.
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Science & Tech
Minority patients face barriers to optimum end-of-life care
Eric Krakauer is an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and part of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Palliative Care Service. He and his colleagues have been concerned that, according to many national studies, minorities do not receive the same level of health care that non-minorities do. This is particularly true in the area of what…
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Science & Tech
Submillimeter array opens one of astronomy’s last frontiers
Exploring one of astronomy’s last frontiers at a site near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the submillimeter array (SMA) project offers a unique opportunity for astronomers to observe objects in unprecedented detail. The SMA will ultimately combine the electronic signals from eight 6-meter antennas to imitate the resolving power of a much larger…
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Health
Study adds to the understanding of musical pitch perception
There are differences in the sounds of two voices or two musical instruments even if they hit the same note, and somehow the brain knows that. A new study shows that the auditory cortex, an area of the brain that interprets sound, is important for frequency processing and pitch perception. The research findings, published in…
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Science & Tech
Chandra finds ghosts of eruption in galaxy cluster
Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory recently discovered relics of an ancient eruption that tore through a cluster of galaxies. The discovery implies that galaxy clusters are the sites of enormously energetic and recurring explosions, and may provide an explanation why galaxy clusters behave like giant cosmic magnets. Galaxy clusters are the largest known gravitationally…
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Science & Tech
Structure in dust around Vega may be signature of planet
Vega, located 25 light years away in the constellation Lyra, is the brightest star in the summer sky. Observations of Vega in 1983 with the Infrared Astronomy Satellite provided the first evidence for large dust particles around another star, probably debris related to the formation of planets. This discovery likely inspired Carl Sagan to place…
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Health
Study reveals how child abuse can lead to substance abuse
It’s a common-sense notion that those who have been abused as children may became drug abusers later in life. But why is this so? Carl Anderson, a Harvard instructor in psychiatry and a research associate in McLean Hospital’s Developmental Biopsychiatry Research Laboratory and Brain Imaging Center, and his colleagues investigated. They found that repeated sexual…
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Health
Researchers explain how protein inhibits growth of blood vessels
Thirty years ago, Judah Folkman, of Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, first developed the idea that cancerous tumors are dependent on the growth of small blood vessels. Since then, Folkman and other researchers have sought a way to block the growth of cancer tumors through restricting or eliminating the small blood vessels that…
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Health
Study upends earlier thinking about immune cell’s readiness against disease
A type of disease-fighting cells in the body — T cells — have a reputation for being ever-ready to fight invading infections. But that’s not the way they really work, found Vassiliki Boussiotis, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and a researcher at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Boussiotis and her colleagues found that…
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Health
Study finds embryonic stem cells can repair heart muscle
Heart failure develops when the heart stops pumping effectively due to the destruction of muscle cells, known as cardiomyocytes. Damage inflicted during a heart attack causes massive loss of cardiomyocytes, resulting in ventricular dysfunction. Although heart transplantation has proven very successful, only a small number of organs are actually available for transplant each year. That’s…
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Health
High levels of Epstein-Barr virus antibodies in women linked to risk of multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis is a chronic degenerative disease of the central nervous system. Nationwide, there are an estimated 250,000 to 350,000 people with MS. Researchers have long wondered how MS develops and why it targets certain individuals, though they have long suspected that a virus was involved. Alberto Ascherio, associate professor in the Departments of Epidemiology…
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Science & Tech
Grants vs . investment subsidies
In many countries, governments face policy decisions about how to help poor people who have difficulty helping themselves because they can’t borrow money. What is the proper form of intervention? What role is it best for the government to fulfill? Should the government just give poor people money, in the form of a grant? Or…
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Science & Tech
Economic growth in Colombia: A reversal of “fortune”?
Between 1950 and 1980, the Colombian economy grew at a respectable average rate of 5 percent. Between 1980 and 2000, that average rate of growth fell to 3 percent. Why? Because of the drop in productivity caused by violence, primarily from the drug trade. According to Colombian economist Mauricio Cardenas, a visiting scholar at the…
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Science & Tech
User fees have unintended effect of decreasing health care access for poor
The reform of health care systems is supposed to make access to health care better. But in the particular case of user fees, the opposite effect was observed. During the 1980s and 1990s, health sector reforms to improve the efficiency of health systems and the quality of care provided were implemented in low-income countries, mainly…
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Science & Tech
Indivisible territory and ethnic war
Monica Duffy Toft is assistant professor of public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and assistant director of the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Toft has studied the causes of ethnic war and developed a theory based on territory. She says that “Attempts to…
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Health
Sickle cell disease cured in mouse model
Sickle cell disease is a blood disorder caused by a single mutation in the beta-globin gene that results in the substitution of one amino acid. This small error is enough to change the properties of the protein: when “sickled,” the blood’s hemoglobin dumps its oxygen in tissues, and it tends to stick to itself. This…
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Health
Polarity gene yields clues to organization of cell signaling, structural growth
Researchers are beginning to understand how a gene called “stardust” works to set up the basic top-down architecture of the epithelial cells that line the gut, skin, and many other organs of an embryo. Working with Norbert Perrimon, Harvard Medical School (HMS) professor of genetics, Beth Stronach, HMS research fellow in genetics, has cloned the…
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Health
Technique enables quick accounting of gene function
Now that whole genomes have been sequenced, a group of scientists has geared up for the next phase: identification and classification of newly discovered coding regions. The DNA microchip, developed just a few years ago, has already become a standard tool in the geneticist’s repertoire. With genomic sequence in hand, the researcher can synthesize all…
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Science & Tech
Diagnosis by database shows promise
A relatively new approach to researching cancer involves looking at the actions of thousands of genes in cancer tumors. This technique just recently became possible because, using new applications of technology, researchers are able to make “diagnoses by database.” At Harvard Medical School, several teams of researchers have recently discovered new types of cancer or…
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Health
Pain and pleasure activate same brain structures
David Borsook is a Harvard Medical School associate professor of radiology, who both treats patients and conducts research. “Over 15 years of seeing patients with pain it became obvious that we do not have good methods of assessing chronic pain,” Borsook says. “And we do not have good methods for treating it.” So Borsook and…
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Campus & Community
Two named 2002 Marshall Scholarship winners
Lauren Baer and Sarah Moss, both Harvard College seniors, have won Marshall Scholarships. The prestigious scholarships allow young American leaders to study at a university in Britain. On Dec. 5, the British ambassador to the United States, Sir Christopher Meyer, announced the names of the 40 American students who will become the new Marshall class.
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Campus & Community
Alexander wins International Rhodes
Karin Alexander of Lowell House is a winner of an International Rhodes Scholarship. Alexander plans to further her work in social studies, in which she concentrated, during her time at Oxford University. Alexander, who grew up in Zimbabwe, will be pursuing a degree in Development Studies at Oxford. She wants to prepare herself to work…
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Campus & Community
In brief
Hauser Center accepting fellowship applicants The Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations is currently accepting applications for the 2002-03 Doctoral Fellowships in Nonprofit Sector Studies. The center will award up to five two-year residential fellowships to doctoral/advanced degree candidates who are enrolled in any program at Harvard University and are engaged in major research or are…