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What Drives Successful Crowdsourcing?
… says his work poses a provocative question: can a crowd of random people outsmart Harvard experts? Lakhani, professor of business administration, seeks the answer in his role at Harvard’s Institute for …
Issue: January-February 2017
Driving Birds Away
… you would avoid laying your eggs within three-quarters of a mile of either side of a busy four-lane highway that runs by Thoreau’s … That noise—not exhaust stink or the sight of speeding machines—apparently creates the broad avoidance zone on …
Issue: May-June 2005
Deep Cravings
… The bombshell dropped in 1976, when "The Natural History of … gamblers may support Bergman's notion. "Gambling at slot machines seems to have more addictive potential than table …
Magnetically Lifted Spirits
… Near the end of the first act in Mozart's Così Fan Tutte, after the two … bodies at her feet. "Very soon now you'll see, by virtue of magnetism's power," she declares, "the end of this …
Issue: May-June 2004
Get Away To France: “Hopping Around”
… France is a first-world country with an integrated system of high-speed trains, subways, and cobblestone avenues. … most easily accessible to tourists become choke points of loud foreigners that make the evacuation of the Titanic look organized. In order to …
Net Effects
… The works of Janet Echelman ’87 tend to take on lives of their own. Installed in public spaces from Amsterdam to …
Issue: May-June 2015
Bedside Manner
… Editor's note: Paul E. Farmer, M.D. '88, Ph.D. '90, is professor of medical anthropology in the department of social medicine. His title and … the other. One feels stilled in the presence of this enterprise. Even the Boston drivers, famously deranged, don't honk …
Issue: November-December 2003
Derek Bok on Technology and Teaching
… Harvard president emeritus Derek Bok, speaking at the six-hundredth anniversary of the University of St Andrews on September 14, focused … Bok noted, changes teaching. First, it makes the enterprise collaborative —with positive implications for the …
Honoris Causa
… degrees at Commencement. Provost Steven E. Hyman introduced the honorands, and President Drew Faust read the citations, … an honorary degree had also been voted to former Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean Jeremy R. Knowles, who died on … and algorithmic serve as source code in the quest to make machines think. Photograph by Stu Rosner Janet D. Rowley. …
Issue: July-August 2008
Grow Up!
… Writing in the Harvard Monthly in 1894, philosophy professor George … A.B. 1886, tried to account for the peculiar appeal of athletics in institutions of higher learning. The usual …
Issue: May-June 2015
Srikant M. Datar Appointed Harvard Business School Dean
… SRIKANT M. DATAR, Dickinson professor of business administration and senior associate dean for … who announced last November that he planned to step down at the end of the 2019-2020 academic year, but then agreed to …
Joseph S. Nye: How Do Past Presidents Rank in Foreign Policy?
… do presidents incorporate morality into decisions involving the national interest? Moral considerations explain why Truman, who authorized the use of nuclear weapons in Japan during World War II, later … And in the effort to do so, we helped to stimulate the rise of basically the terrorist movements in the region, …
Can Science Justify Itself?
… And most expect any attack on those values to come from the far right: from foes of progressivism, from anti-science religious movements, … proven excellent clickbait, he observes, and are on the rise in number and popularity—and editors have spotted this …
Issue: March-April 2018
Site Seeing
… Space. The final frontiers—the last major developable parcels owned … soon have new buildings on them with all manner of space for faculty and staff members and students. Soon … where a new science complex of four buildings is about to rise above an underground parking garage with perhaps 600 or …
Issue: May-June 2008
Harnessing Evolution
… Applying evolution in the laboratory poses a fundamental problem: the experiments … are pared. But even in fast-reproducing organisms, a round of laboratory evolution takes about a week. For “100 rounds of evolution, that’s two years,” says professor of chemistry …
Issue: January-February 2017