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Watch Out
… As you stroll along a summer beach, you may be on the lookout for shells, among other sights. Many are … and oyster shells on a Cape Cod beach may remind you of delectables to eat. You may pick up and pocket that … octopuses, and other invertebrates that together comprise almost a quarter of all known marine species. A display …
Issue: July-August 2012
Keeping the 375th Green
… Mindful of the mantra “ Green is the new Crimson ,” the 375th anniversary party organizers … and all leftovers donated or composted. Multiple offices have helped plan for that goal, including the …
Scaffolding and Science
… Photograph by Jim Harrison Byerly Hall is known to tens of thousands of would-be Harvard College students as the home of undergraduate admissions. No longer. Those …
Issue: September-October 2007
Thinking Small
… manipulate objects and forces at a scale one-millionth the size of the period at the end of this sentence. At that size, … the Casimir force after a Dutch theoretical physicist, arises from quantum fluctuations of the vacuum rather than …
Issue: January-February 2005
Off the Shelf
… Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men , by John A. Rich, M.P.H. ’90 (Johns Hopkins, $24.95). The author, now a professor at Drexel University School of Public Health, offers …
Issue: March-April 2010
Who Let the Dogs Out?
… The Yale bulldog, muzzled by Harvard for five straight … out an Ivy League season made memorable by the exploits of Crimson running back Clifton Dawson, Yale’s 34-13 victory gave the Eli the co-championship of the league (shared with Princeton) and consigned Harvard …
Issue: January-February 2007
How to Beat the Heat
… Go to the bottom of the world and (almost) to the top. You’ll be … I was an enthusiastic English concentrator, but I was surprised now to learn so much about the English department of … to occupy his time on a train journey to Chicago. I was surprised to learn that Professor John M. Bullitt, the first …
Issue: September-October 2013
“Doctor Bugs”
… through a Peruvian rainforest looking for ants, Mark W. Moffett, Ph.D. ’87, accidentally sat on a deadly fer-de-lance … Kenya, and India, he barely escaped stampeding elephants. Then there was the time in Colombia, while tracking the … for his newest book, The Human Swarm: How Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fail (Basic Books), which was published in …
Issue: May-June 2019
A Goodly Company
… in a little town on Cape Cod. I would ride my bicycle to the local library, housed in a converted Victorian house … dark, cool and musty inside. There I experienced the thrill of independence and—owing to the ten book borrowing maximum—the agony of choice. I spent hours considering and reconsidering my …
Issue: September-October 2014
Reviving Black Classical Music
… In the mid-1850s, a blind, enslaved boy sat down at his owner’s … and sheet music made him the highest-grossing pianist of the century, but all the money went to his enslaver (or, … albums in addition to performing live, but the gigs comprise most of his musical income: his albums barely make …
Issue: November-December 2023
Peacemakers
… If there is going to be a two-state solution to the … conflict," says Robert H. Mnookin, "the rough outlines of what the deal might be are not terribly difficult to … to court, but through arbitration." Further disputes did arise almost immediately, says Mnookin, "because the …
Issue: March-April 2004
Nuclear Weapons or Democracy
… The most fateful object yet to appear on this planet could … top-secret information and tools that enable the president of the United States to launch a nuclear strike. The … to war. Scarry’s book makes clear that the social contract arises from the need to prevent the injuries that people …
Issue: March-April 2014
Stinging the Blues
… The bulldog got stung again in the final minutes of The Game. To football-loving Old Blues, these acts of Harvard waspishness must seem to repeat themselves like a …
Issue: January-February 2010
Mary Ellen Avery
… Mary Ellen Avery finally began to walk, at 19 months, her mother wrote, “Having discovered she could walk, she kept … steadily at it.” That observation characterized the rest of Mel Avery’s life. From childhood on, she clearly had an outsized sense of self and purpose and a zest for new experiences that help …
Amalie M. Kass , Eleanor G. Shore
Issue: March-April 2018
News in Brief
… Physician-Writers on the Podium A pair of prominent physician-authors will be the … . Toehold in Allston As construction of the enterprise research campus proceeds in Allston, across Western …
Issue: May-June 2025