all communication stories

Finding the seat of language?

404132862 — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:59:52 -0400

A team of Harvard and University of California, San Diego (UCSD), researchers report having pinpointed an area of the brain where three essential components of language — word identification, grammar, and word pronunciation — are processed.

Ned T.

Report documents importance of playlists

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 07:10:47 -0400

Drawing from an early-adopter survey conducted through Gartner, Harvard College student Derek Slater and Mike McGuire, Gartner research director, found that consumer-to-consumer recommendation tools, like playlists, enable consumers to actively present their individual tastes to each other and are becoming increasingly common. According to survey results, nearly 20 percent of online music listeners reported listening to music via playlists at least five days a week.

Diminishing returns

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:34:45 -0400

Election Night is one of the increasingly rare moments when large numbers of Americans gather in front of their television sets to hear about politics. Although a comparison of the 2000 election night broadcasts with those of 1968 indicates that these programs have increasingly employed sophisticated projection techniques, they now contain less of the content that would help the public to understand why the election came out as it did, and what the outcome portends for the governing process.

Scholars resuscitate dead languages

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:33:11 -0400

The goal of a Harvard academic research project is to develop advanced computer technology that will help scholars mine myriad scientific texts in a variety of languages, but also to connect the dots between them. In this way, it can broaden the scope of scholarship, but also sharpen the scholar's ability to probe deeply into the past, thereby shedding new light on generally accepted assumptions. Named the Archimedes Project, the investigation is in its third year. "Now what we can do is take into account a vastly wider range of evidence, and that changes the picture quite considerably," explained Mark Schiefsky, an assistant professor of the classics at Harvard and the principal investigator of the Harvard team. "It changes our idea of what mechanics was like in antiquity, in such a way that it makes it seem both much more complicated and more modern than one might have thought." The project is funded by the National Science Foundation and conducted in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.

Dictionary collects American regional expressions

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:30:40 -0400

Besides shedding light on mind-teasing and sense-pleasing expressions, the Dictionary of Regional English (DARE) is a fun book to browse through - all four volumes. Hundreds of maps show where the expressions originate, and the words are used in sentences. For example, you are most likely to hear "Martha ate her toast and dropped egg" in the Northeast, particularly Maine. "DARE is much more than a word list," says Jennifer Snodgrass, reference editor and custodian of the dictionary project for the Harvard University Press, which publishes it. "It's a portrait of American language. It's a great resource, not only for librarians and scholars, but also for writers and for those who want to find out what grandma meant when she used words like 'quiddle' (to trifle or fuss). Law enforcement agencies have used it to search for regional clues in ransom notes, and dialogue coaches draw upon it to prepare Broadway actors for parts that require regional accents." "We all assume we speak the same language," notes Joan Hall, chief editor of DARE, which is put together at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "But we are constantly surprised by its wonderful regional variations. DARE is a record of these variations."

Researchers debate origin of language

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:26:25 -0400

Birds sing, chimps grunt, and whales whistle, but those sounds fall far short of expressing the richness of their experiences. Their lack of language goes to the question of why humans have it but no other animals do. That question in turn leads to two major theories of the origin of language. One is the idea that language arises from bird song, dolphin whistles, monkey hoots, and other precursors that extend back through hundreds of millions of years of evolution. The other theory maintains that language is a uniquely human adaptation, or series of adaptations, with no precursors among other species. Marc Hauser, a Harvard professor of psychology, and his colleagues have come up with a third idea.

Harvard science historian publishes results of unprecedented 30-year census of Copernican masterpiece

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:25:22 -0400

First published in 1543, Nicholas Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium introduced the world to the concept of a sun-centered universe. In it, Copernicus detailed how the motions of the sun, moon, planets, and stars could be explained if the earth orbited the sun -- a revolutionary idea. Starting in the 1970s, researcher Owen Gingerich began surveying all known copies of this work from its first two printings in 1543 and 1566.

Harvard scientists contribute to National Academy terrorism report

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:23:03 -0400

A report by the National Academy of Sciences presents dozens of recommendations in nine main areas to counter terrorism: nuclear and radiological threats, human and agricultural health systems, toxic chemicals and explosive materials, information technology, energy systems, transportation systems, cities and fixed infrastructure, the response of people to terrorism, and complex and interdependent systems. Many Harvard researchers contributed to the report. Among the many recommendations, the committee highlighted seven for immediate action and seven more that require urgent research. They urged immediately improvement in the control and protection of nuclear weapons and material, ensuring adequate supply and distribution of vaccines, and increasing security for transportation systems, especially shipping containers and transport of toxic or flammable materials. They also called for increased security for energy systems, improved effectiveness of air ventilation systems, improved communications for emergency response personnel, and the selection of trusted spokespeople. The areas identified as urgent research needs were developing vaccines and treatments for hard-to-treat and incurable illnesses, a flexible and adaptive power grid, enhancing computer security, developing better technology for emergency personnel, advancing engineering standards for blast-resistant and fire-resistant buildings, developing sensor and surveillance systems and creating new methods and standards for air filtration and decontamination.

Emergency communications

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:22:55 -0400

As almost 60,000 federal, state and local public safety agencies plan to upgrade their communications systems in the wake of 9/11, Kennedy School of Government Assistant Professor of Public Policy Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger took a hard look at communications interoperability and its implementation, in the United States and in Europe. Three steps have been seen as requirements for interoperability: inventing the appropriate technology, setting common standards and frequencies, and providing adequate funding. Mayer-Schoenberger looked at each of these steps in the U.S. and European contexts and analyzed successes and failures, rendering a fuller picture both of the challenges for interoperability and of best practices to meet them. He found that over the last few years the Europeans have pulled ahead of the U.S. in implementing interoperability, although with determination and the right set of strategies, U.S. policymakers can easily make up lost ground.

Direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs grows rapidly

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:19:33 -0400

In the first analysis of patterns of direct-to-consumer advertising before and after 1997 guidelines issued by the Food and Drug Administration, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School and the Sloan School of Management at MIT have found that such advertising increased three-fold between 1996 and 2000. Still, direct-to-consumer advertising accounted for only 15 percent of drug promotion by pharmaceutical companies and was highly concentrated among a small group of products.

Which side are you on?

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:19:39 -0400

Andrew Kydd is an assistant professor of government at Harvard University who has developed an interesting theory about mediation. As Kydd writes in the introduction to a working paper, "Mediators are often thought to be more effective if they are unbiased, or have no preferences over the issue in dispute. ... For a mediator to be effective, however, the parties must believe that the mediator is telling the truth, especially if the mediator counsels one side not to make a large demand because their opponent has high resolve and will fight. An unbiased mediator who is simply interested in minimizing the probability of war will have a strong incentive to make such statements even if they are not true, hence the parties will not find the mediator credible."

Study defines clear roles for parents of teenagers

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:05:42 -0400

A new study by the Center for Health Communication at the Harvard School of Public Health cuts through the confusion that parents of teenagers experience because of conflicting advice. The study lidentified key messages about raising teenagers on which experts agree. The results focus on practical guidelines and strategies that can contribute to healthy adolescent development and prevent problems such as violence and mental illness. For example, one of the report's Five Basics of Parenting Adolescents, "Monitor and Observe," describes research showing a link between parents' keeping an eye on teens' whereabouts and the prevention of problems such as drug abuse and delinquency. Another guideline, "Guide and Limit," supports a strategy of maintaining family rules but avoiding rigid restrictions, or "Loosen up, but don't let go."

Nine keys to a knowledge infrastructure

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:15:14 -0400

Yesha Y. Sivan, CEO of the K2K Knowledge Infrastructure Laboratory and a visiting scholar at Harvard, has outlined a strategy to allow knowledge-based organizations to plan, implement and evaluate the success of their knowledge management (KM) strategies. In the emerging field of knowledge management, a bridge between the theoretical and the practical has been missing; this research report attempts to bridge that gap. Sivan offers a detailed strategy focusing on nine "keys": culture, technology, processes, users, switchboard, services, value, design and premises. The full research report is available for download in PDF format at the Program on Information Resources Policy website.

Ancient Chinese script rewrites history

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:07:15 -0400

"This is like the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls," says Tu Weiming, director of the Harvard Yenching Institute, who has played a key role in the preservation of ancient texts that cast new light on early Confucianism. The texts were discovered in 1993 near a river in Guodian, China, not far from a farmhouse made of earth and thatched with straw. "With the discovery of these texts, I think you can say that the history of Confucianism itself will have to be rewritten," says Tu.

Should computer code be considered free speech?

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:12:45 -0400

Unlike all other forms of "speech" that are protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, computer source code holds a unique place in the law. Computer source code can be copyrighted, like a book. And it can be patented like a machine or a process. The result is confusion in the legal arena, with case law, intellectual property law and encryption export regulations all reflecting this contradictory dichotomy. There are currently three cases before three separate federal courts that address as their core issue whether code is speech. The issue is important because of government regulations that seek to limit citizens' access to strong encryption technology. Researchers Jean Camp and Ken Lewis strongly make the case that code is speech, and that government efforts to prevent citizens from having encryption software is unconstitutional.