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Beyond the Genome
During the past few decades , most scientific research into the causes of autism has been focused on the structural wiring of the brain and on the genes that control it. Evidence of chronic sickness or general physical discomfort in autistic children has …
Issue: January-February 2008
Think Tank for Aid Workers
After Michael J. VanRooyen finished his residency in emergency medicine in 1991, he went to Somalia. Eager to see how his medical training would translate into the context of a poor nation torn by civil war, VanRooyen concluded very quickly that it …
Issue: November-December 2007
"The Gates of Paradise"
The main baptistery doors of the Duomo in Florence, created by Lorenzo Ghiberti between 1425 and 1452, are among the masterpieces that ushered in the Renaissance. Michelangelo himself declared them “worthy to be the gates of Paradise.” Each bronze door …
Issue: March-April 2007
New Museum on Fast Track
Harvard planners announced in December that a new, permanent art museum would rise at 224 Western Avenue, a prime site in the University’s incipient Allston campus. Some facility is needed urgently in which to put a quarter of a million art objects, and …
Issue: March-April 2007
Ivy Sports in Retreat
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, universities across the country have dropped varsity sports teams at an unprecedented rate. At the Division I level, cuts began to be announced in early April. Facing declining enrollments, universities like Old Dominion …
An Embodied Voice
A Latin American immigrant living in Los Angeles listens to the radio on her way home. She hears a familiar public-service announcement in Spanish: a rapid and caring voice, the kind that might belong to a concerned aunt, reminding LA Metro commuters to …
Issue: September-October 2020
The Science of Hurt
The Reverend Stephen Fulton falls a lot. Once he toppled into a freezer case at the grocery store. He has difficulty walking, and he can’t sit or stand for long periods. He can’t garden anymore, and had to retire early from his regular pastoral duties …
Issue: November-December 2005
Cambridge 02138
The Power Problem Part of the problem in energizing a passive public about the carbon problem is that the term “global warming” is too tame. It hasn’t motivated people like me to acknowledge the severity and immediacy, yet solubility, of the problem. In …
Issue: July-August 2006
Goal-Oriented
Football player John McCluskey '66 first put things into perspective during his senior year. "My mind was beginning to drift a bit," he says about the fall of 1965. "I mean, football was important, but I'd pick up the news paper and read about what was …
Issue: November-December 2004
Down-under Dominator
Seventy-eight feet away at the other end of the tennis court, she doesn’t seem prepossessing. The young Aussie stands five feet, two inches, with small bones and a sweet face. Unlike so many American college players, she is not a trained bundle of …
Issue: July-August 2006
El-Erian for the Endowment
More than a name and face will change at Harvard Management Company (HMC), the investment organization for the University’s endowment, with the arrival early this year of Mohamed A. El-Erian as president and chief executive officer. The appointment was …
Issue: January-February 2006
The Way of Trout
Strange to say, swimming through rough water may actually be easier than swimming across a calm pond. At least that's true for many kinds of fish, whose body structure allows them to capitalize on turbulence and use the water's energy to propel themselves …
Issue: March-April 2004
“From Neither Here Nor There”
The penultimate chapter of sociologist Roberto Gonzales’s book Lives in Limbo —the chapter he calls the most painful and gripping to read, the one that would be its climax, if the book were a work of fiction—opens with a story about two factory workers on …
Issue: July-August 2020
Frances Glessner Lee
To a forensic investigator, trivial details can reveal transgressive acts. Consider the card Frances Glessner Lee carried in her later years, listing both her married name and her honorary title—captain of the New Hampshire State Police. A hybrid of the …
Issue: September-October 2005
Latin Salutatory: “Campus of Dreams”
by Caitlin Cecilia Gilespie '05 Authorized English translaton follows... Praeses Aestive, Decani, Professores, vos qui geritis et exercitis nostros manipulos Harvardianos; amici et familiae, qui nos honati sunt sicut fautores avidissimi in Campo Paludum; …