November-December 2008

James Hanken of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and other scientists launch an ambitious project to chronicle all life on earth.

Mechanical engineering student Emilie Dressaire studies tiny bubbles that can last up to a year and replace fat droplets in ice cream.

Interdisciplinary economist Nathan Nunn explores the problem of African underdevelopment by drawing on—and unearthing—historical data about slavery.

After a childhood spent playing the classics, cellist Matt Haimovitz has devoted himself to new music.

An excerpt from The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies, by Bert Hölldobler and E. O. Wilson

Fabric artist Linda Liu Behar stitches embroideries atop her own photographs.

A new book, Le Corbusier Le Grand, pulls together the career of Le Corbusier, with material on Harvard’s Carpenter Center.

James Cuno reviews Old Masters, New World: America’s Raid on Europe’s Great Pictures, by Cynthia Saltzman

History professor Jill Lepore is the coauthor, with Jane Kamensky, of the historical novel Blindspot, set in colonial Boston.

Profiles of Maryann Thompson, who practices sustainable architecture; Sarah Beatty, who founded a green building-supplies company; and David Hamilton, who works to preserve farmland

A review of a Japanese restaurant, Douzo, in Boston

Craig Lambert profiles the poet Richard Wilbur.

Kit Reed introduces an exhibition at the Harvard Museum of Natural History that reveals the different roles color plays in the animal and plant kingdoms.

William P. MacKinnon profiles the early war correspondent who covered the Utah War against the Mormon government of Brigham Young.

Elizabeth Gudrais reports on how discoveries in genetics, cell metabolism, and the study of small molecules point the way to new therapies and perhaps a cure for diabetes.

The new Northwest Science Building at Harvard

Harvard’s endowment grows in fiscal year 2008 by $2.0 billion, or 5.7 percent, to $36.9 billion.

Harvard Business School professor Tarun Khanna seeks to integrate Western business models into emerging markets.

Harvard researchers at the Stem Cell Institute achieve major breakthroughs.

Ariel Phillips and Abigail Lipson head the Success-Failure Project at the Harvard Bureau of Study Counsel.

A summary of the Harvard University Financial Report for fiscal year 2008

The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary.

Francine Polet brings international experience and tactics to the Harvard field-hockey team.

A report on the first half of the Harvard football season. And: The Harvard football team has a fancy new locker room.

William Thomas, founder of the Eden Alternative and the Green House Project, reimagines nursing homes and residential living for the elderly.

A map showing “The Dispersal of the Children of Noah,” in an exhibit at the Andover-Harvard Theological Library, reflects dispute by Puritan theologian Hugh Broughton about biblical chronology, touched off by the publication of his book A Concent of Scripture.