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A New University for Vietnam
The government of Vietnam has approved in principle the establishment of Fulbright University Vietnam (FUV), that country’s first private, nonprofit institution of higher education. FUV will be based upon the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program (FETP) , …
The Fix in Fossil Fuels
The United States is wasting more than $4 billion a year by giving oil and gas companies tax breaks that do not benefit consumers or the economy, says Joseph Aldy, assistant professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government and a former …
Issue: January-February 2014
Mastering the “Hidden Curriculum”
A new student heard a classmate mention choosing a gift from a bridal registry for a friend. “What the hell is a bridal registry?” she wondered. As she tried to choose courses, she had to visit the library to explore what unfamiliar subjects were , before …
Issue: November-December 2017
The Shape of Sound
During her junior year of college, Jessica Shand ’22 discovered topology—a branch of mathematics that studies how far shapes can stretch and morph before they lose their core properties. “I just thought it was so strange,” she says, “seeing these …
Issue: May-June 2025
The Dangers of Mirror Life
Synthetic biologists can alter the genes of microbes, plants, and animals to give them new abilities, with wide-ranging applications in medicine, agriculture, and manufacturing. But one advance in the field has raised special concern: that researchers …
Issue: May-June 2025
The New Republican Mavericks of Cambridge
It has been a very disheartening few months,” says Declan Garvey ’17, president of the Harvard Republican Club (HRC). A year ago, the members of the oldest College Republicans chapter in the United States were gearing up for what promised to be a bright …
Lowell House Renovations: An Inside Look
“They used to sleep on Lowell; now they[’re] jealous of our renovations,” croons Eric Tarlin ’21 on Lowell House’s 2019 Housing Day music video. Based on “Congratulations,” a swaggering, autotune-heavy hit by rapper Post Malone, “Renovations” …
Double Vision
Having experienced their own twenty-fifth reunion last year, twin brothers Mark and Steve O'Donnell ('76 and '76, respectively) offer these visions, transcribed while they murmured in a restless dream state on undersized beds expressly borrowed from a …
Issue: May-June 2002
Spotting Pollutants from Space
In April, a SpaceX rocket carried a commercial communications satellite to a geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles above the equator. The satellite carried an important payload: a $93-million instrument for measuring pollution across North America, …
Issue: July-August 2023
Trailblazer in Space Science: The Legacy of Harvard's Ursula B. Marvin
Among Harvard’s greatest treasures are people who revel in discovery and disperse dusty clouds of ignorance. Among them was Ursula B. Marvin, who teased solar system secrets from meteorites, contributed to deciphering the Moon’s evolution from Apollo …
Issue: July-August 2023
Engineering Virus-free Cells… and Organs?
In January 2022, a 57-year-old man named David Bennett Sr. made history when he became the first human patient to receive a heart transplanted from a genetically modified pig. The procedure, known as a xenotransplant, has been heralded as the solution for …
Issue: July-August 2023
An Obligation to Dignity
“If it was a paperback, it sounded damn near like birds’ wings fluttering.” That’s how Reginald Dwayne Betts, speaking at the Graduate School of Design on Tuesday evening, described the underground library that inmates had built in the prison where he was …
China’s Excess Wind Energy
There’s a problem with sustainable energy, and it will only grow with time. Now that wind and solar have become cheaper sources of electricity than fossil fuels in some places, the problem is intermittency—what to do when the wind dies or the sun goes …
Issue: November-December 2021
Hot Canvases
Every day when he goes to work at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Anthony Amore, M.P.A. ’00, sees an empty frame on the wall. It used to hold Johannes Vermeer’s The Concert —one of 13 paintings stolen from the Gardner in the early-morning hours …
Issue: March-April 2012
Yesterday’s News
1919 Alice Hamilton is appointed assistant professor of industrial medicine, becoming the first woman to hold a professorial position at the University. 1939 A negotiated agreement on raises ends the threat of a strike by dining hall workers, and the …
Issue: March-April 2024