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Ceres Bright Spot is Salty

Ceres Bright Spot is Salty

June 30, 2016

Spectral observations by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft reveal that the dwarf planet’s mysterious beacon is made of salt.

A patchwork of bright splashes inside Occator Crater on Ceres continues to puzzle planetary scientists. NASA's Dawn spacecraft recorded this composite view in August 2015.
NASA / JPL / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA

Planetary scientists say they’ve finally solved the mystery of Ceres’ bright spot. The spot, a comparatively reflective...

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Tour July’s Sky: Planets on Parade

Tour July’s Sky: Planets on Parade

June 30, 2016

Sky & Telescope's astronomy podcast takes you on a guided tour of the night sky. In early evening look for Jupiter in the southwest, with Mars and Saturn embedded in Scorpius toward south.

For us northerners, July is a time of long, hot days. Yet on July 4th Earth reaches aphelion, the point in its orbit most distant from the Sun. On that date we’re 1.7% farther away than on average.

Throughout July you can find three easy-to-spot planets adorning the evening sky. Soon after the Sun sets, look for Jupiter shining brightly well up in...

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claudia goldin

Faculty Lunches on Active Learning

June 30, 2016

When Ofrit Liviatan attended the second of three Bok Faculty Lunches on Active Learning in the spring 2016 semester, it was a remark from a literature professor she didn’t know that made the greatest impact.  The faculty presenter was philosophy professor Bernhard Nickel, explaining how he led students in creative exercises to construct a philosophical argument from a text.  The literature professor raised her hand and said that she did it entirely differently because, after all, she wasn’t looking so much for the philosophical elements of a text.  “What surprised you most?” might be a question she asked instead.

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BA 1

Bok Assessment: Using Feedback to Improve Learning

June 30, 2016

In fall 2015, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health began its first “blended” master’s degree in public health, combining online course work withthree-week residences at the start, middle and end of the two-year program, the first degree of its type at Harvard.  The program was committed to ensuring excellence consistent with its residential MPH program in terms of academic rigor, students’ exposure to teaching staff and developing camaraderie within their cohort.  The 50 students, each with a master’s or doctoral degree, and 60 percent of them physicians, were strong academically, but most of them had demanding full-time jobs across the country and even abroad.  How would Harvard keep them engaged with coursework and facilitate collaboration across borders and time zones?

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Departmental Teaching Fellows

June 30, 2016

When Adam Beaver was the Departmental Teaching Fellow in History in 2006, the job was simple, if arduous: over the year he had to watch videos of 30 graduate students, all first-time instructors teaching in their first undergraduate classroom; and he had to do it sitting alongside them. He learned to stop the film at some arbitrary point early in the hour and ask a general question like, “Who’s that guy with the hat on?”  It was an icebreaker; soon the novice teacher would be telling Beaver, “That’s Joe, and I just can’t get him to talk.”

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Learning Lab

Learning Lab 2015-2016

June 30, 2016

The first assignment, for the General Education course on “Primitive Navigation,” was for students to start at the John Harvard statue in the Yard, walk due west for what seemed 20 minutes with no tools or aids including a watch or phone, and see where they ended up.  Probably students had an inkling this wasn’t going to end well.  They would end up all over the greater Harvard Square area, knowing they were “lost.”  So what?

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Highlights from the 2016 Harvard Ophthalmology Annual Meeting and Alumni Reunion

June 30, 2016

Attracting more than 330 alumni, faculty, and trainees, the 2016 HMS Ophthalmology Annual Meeting and Alumni Reunion offered an array of continuing medical education (CME) events as well as opportunities for networking and reconnecting with classmates. Most attendees were from the New England and Tristate areas, although a few traveled from as far as California, Singapore, and India. All nine HMS Ophthalmology affiliates were represented.

Co-chaired by ...

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Intelligent Machines Can Craft Smarter Policies

Intelligent Machines Can Craft Smarter Policies

June 30, 2016

Aspen Ideas Festival 2016 | Aspen lecture by Sendhil Mullainathan, Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics. Algorithms can now identify faces, drive cars, translate text, and even write news stories. This same technology, used wisely, can help us tackle some of the most pressing social problems of our time—from inequality to mass incarceration. Harvard economics professor Sendhil Mullainathan illustrates intuitively how these technologies work and why he thinks they can be useful in social policy. [Video and transcript]