Following the release of a series of working papers based on 17 online courses from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offered on the edX platform, researchers have made available a suite of powerful open source interactive visualization tools. The technologies, dubbed Insights, draw upon near real-time, de-identified data of course registrants, dynamically updating…

Retired HGSE Professor Israel Scheffler, a philosopher of education, passed away on Sunday at the age of 90. He began his career at HGSE in 1952, where he worked for 40 years teaching courses and conducting research on the philosophy of education. “Israel Scheffler leaves behind a lasting legacy in the field of the philosophy of…

The cost of special education and medical services for a child with autism averages $17,000 annually, according to a new study by researchers from Harvard School of Public Health and colleagues. Schools bear the brunt of the economic burden, according to the study. The researchers found that parents of children with autism faced no greater out-of-pocket medical…

Seven Harvard faculty members are among the 126 scholars being awarded Sloan Research Fellowships by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The fellowships go to early career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as the next generation of scientific leaders. This year’s Harvard recipients are Emily Balskus, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical…

Parents with guns in the house should assume their children are aware of the firearms – and possibly have even touched them, according to David Hemenway, professor of health policy and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). “Just like parents don’t think kids know where the Christmas presents are hidden, the same is…

In the United States, the average person is exposed to more than a hundred chemicals from cosmetics, soaps, and other personal care products before leaving the house in the morning. While people may assume these products are safe, their chemical ingredients are mostly untested and largely unregulated, with even known carcinogenic and endocrine disrupting chemicals…

The Harvard Graduate School of Education is pleased to announce its spring 2014 Askwith Forums, a series of public lectures dedicated to discussing challenges facing education, sharing new knowledge, and generating spirited conversation. Highlights this spring will include a discussion about how hip-hop culture can offer teaching and learning tools in science with Assistant Columbia…

The Shorenstein Center welcomed Andrea Mitchell, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent and host of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” to discuss the challenges of reporting on global issues in an ever-changing media environment. Mitchell admitted that there is a “great appetite” for foreign coverage today, but she questions whether “we have the tools” to accurately report…

David Carr’s column on media and culture at The New York Times is “required reading” for anyone in the business, said Shorenstein Center Director Alex S. Jones at the first speaker event of the spring semester. Carr shared his thoughts on changing media models, and how old and new media “are marching toward each other.” With new…

Harvard Library is offering an environmental way to let your favorite people know you care on this Valentine’s Day. Simply click on the link provided, choose a card, write your greeting, and send it via email. The cards range from a 19th-century hand-drawn valentine card from Houghton Library to an image from Emily Dickinson’s herbarium…

The Fromm Players at Harvard presents its annual two-concert series of new music works February 28 and March 1 at 8 p.m. in John Knowles Paine Concert Hall. This year’s performances, titled “The natural | The artificial,” feature Dal Niente, a 20-member Chicago-based contemporary music collective, who will present two world premieres and two U.S.…

Can a TV show change the way people think about a health issue? Yes, it can—and it has. One of the most successful public health campaigns—the Designated Driver Campaign, spearheaded in the United States in the late 1980s by Harvard School of Public Health’s (HSPH) Center for Health Communication, led by Jay Winsten—got a major boost from being…

In the midst of a debate about Obamacare’s impact on the U.S. economy, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) faculty say that it’s important to focus not only on the potential economic drag of the health reform law but also on its much-needed emphasis on lower costs and greater efficiency in the health care system. Obamacare’s economic impact…

The Affordable Care Act is providing a cure for the phenomenon known as “job lock” — when a worker stays in a position solely for employer-sponsored health insurance. That’s according to Katherine Swartz, professor of health policy and economics at Harvard School of Public Health, and Theda Skocpol of Harvard University, authors of a February 6, 2014 USA Today editorial.…

For very young children, growing up in a chronically stressful situation can lead to difficulties in school and poor health later in life, new research suggests. To offset these by-products of “toxic stress” in the most at-risk children, Jack Shonkoff of Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) says it’s important to help build the capabilities of parents and…

A new report suggests that children who are overweight or obese by the time they enter kindergarten have a high likelihood of staying that way as they grow older. Looking at more than 7,700 children over a nine-year-period, the Emory University study found that children who started kindergarten overweight had about four times the risk of becoming…

Light bulbs, hand-dryers, or chilled- and hot- water pumps rarely evoke dedicated interest or enthusiasm, but for Harvard’s building managers and facility leaders the energy and cost savings these technologies can deliver tend to inspire such reactions. To capture this enthusiasm, Harvard’s first-ever sustainability-focused Operations and Maintenance trade show was held on Tuesday January 21.…

Katia Bertoldi, associate professor in applied mechanics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), has been selected to receive the 2014 Thomas J. R. Hughes Young Investigator Award of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The award, established in 1998, recognizes special achievements in applied mechanics for researchers under the age…

How hard is it for women in Appalachia to get an abortion, and what’s the impact on their health if access is a problem? Jennifer O’Donnell wants to know the answers to those questions. As part of her research, she has waited inside waiting rooms in health clinics and outside shopping centers in Kentucky, Tennessee,…

A new study finds that people with access to a gun are three times more likely to commit suicide and almost twice as likely to be murdered. David Hemenway of Harvard School of Public Health — who wrote an editorial in the Annals of Internal Medicine to accompany the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) study — said that the results suggest that people should try to limit…

The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts announced today the appointment of James Voorhies as the first John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director of the Carpenter Center, effective February 5, 2014. A curator, art historian, and writer, Voorhies comes to the Carpenter Center from Bureau for Open Culture, an itinerant contemporary arts institution where…

In a 2007 excavation of Harvard Yard, archaeology students unearthed a handful of metal fragments, each imprinted with a letter. The pieces, which were determined to be 17th-century movable type, root the history of printing at the feet of current students and gave context for Houghton Library’s letterpress printing workshop during this year’s Wintersession. Across…

Students who attended “Treasures of the Loeb Music Library,” a Wintersession event hosted by Library Assistant Peter Laurence, Reference and Digital Program Librarian Kerry Masteller, and Music Reference and Research Librarian Liza Vick, arrived at the Merritt Room to a cross-section of the library’s rare recordings, medieval manuscripts, annotated scores and early edition songbooks. “The…

K. “Vish” Viswanath, professor of health communication at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), is interested in finding better ways to communicate health information to lower-income individuals. He answers three questions about a recent study he co-authored that analyzed how the poor use the Internet when they are provided with access — the first randomized controlled trial…

The United States could learn a thing or two from Singapore when it comes to providing quality health care at reasonable cost, according to biologist, entrepreneur, and author William Haseltine. Intrigued by the fact that the Southeast Asian nation spends only 3% of its GDP on health care in contrast to the United States’ nearly 18%—yet has a healthier population—Haseltine,…

Robert Kirshner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has received the James Craig Watson Medal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for his lifetime scientific achievements in astronomy. The NAS will present his medal at a ceremony at the Academy’s annual meeting on April 27, 2014. Kirshner is among 15 individuals honored by the…

A new report released by Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights on January 13, 2014 documents the dire conditions faced by Syrian refugee children in Lebanon. Released in conjunction with a United Nations-sponsored donor conference on Syria taking place in Kuwait on January 15, the report urges increased funding and a long-term humanitarian response to meet the…

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the newly launched Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, has welcomed 16 fellows for the 2013-14 academic year. “We are delighted to welcome one of our most prestigious, exciting, and diverse classes of fellows of the W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute, housed…

Despite progress made in educational systems in recent decades, more than 100 million children are not enrolled in primary or lower-secondary school, and many of those who do attend lack basic reading and writing skills, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF). Meanwhile, many countries face high unemployment rates, while regions like Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia  have…

The 2014 Rossi Prize of the American Astronomical Society has been awarded to Douglas (Doug) Finkbeiner, Harvard professor of astronomy and of physics, for the “discovery, in gamma rays, of the large unanticipated Galactic structure called the ‘Fermi Bubbles.’” He shares the prize with Meng Su (presently a Pappalardo Fellow at MIT) and Tracy Slatyer…