Dean David Ellwood is leading a group of Harvard Kennedy School faculty members to Beijing to help strengthen the school’s commitment to the study of Chinese governance and public policy. The Harvard contingent will gather with a group of academics from throughout China at a week-long conference, “Challenge and Cooperation: How Can Rising China and Adjusting U.S.…

Formidable challenges stand in the way of controlling and eventually eliminating nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons in the Middle East. A new discussion paper issued by the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs outlines both the challenges and a set of near-term measures designed to fast forward…

Harvard School of Public Health’s new online course, “Health in Numbers: Quantitative Methods in Clinical and Public Health Research,” an introduction to biostatistics and epidemiology, has drawn 53,857 students from all over the world. The three-month course, which began in October 2012, was one of the first two courses offered by Harvard through edX, the online…

Based on a 2010 survey of people who used Massachusetts’ health insurance exchange (“The Connector”) to sign up for a health plan—and who experienced some difficulty with things like understanding and choosing plans—a group of investigators concludes that such exchanges should be designed with users’ experience in mind. States are now required to create health…

Breast cancer is a leading cause of death among women in China, with 1.1 million new cases annually. China’s breast cancer mortality has doubled over the past 30 years. Diagnosis tends to be made when the women are older and already in Stage III/IV, compared to Western countries where patients generally are diagnosed earlier and…

In the wake of the horrific school shootings in Newtown, Conn., in December, three Harvard experts say the best way to curb gun violence in the U.S. is to take a broad public health approach, drawing on proven, evidence-based strategies that have successfully reduced other public health threats like smoking, car crashes, and accidental poisonings.…

At a time when communication networks are scrambling for ways to transmit more data over limited bandwidth, a type of twisted light wave is gaining new attention. Called an optical vortex or vortex beam, this complex beam resembles a corkscrew, with waves that rotate as they travel. Now, applied physicists at the Harvard School of…

Experts quoted in a December 17, 2012 Washington Post article—including Michael Rich, MPH ’97 and an associate professor in the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health at Harvard School of Public Health—raised doubts about the wisdom of allowing very young children to use iPads. Rich, who also directs the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston…

Leslie Valiant, T. Jefferson Coolidge Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has been named a 2012 fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He is among 52 people who were recently named fellows for their contributions to computing that are fundamentally advancing technology in…

Breast cancer is a leading cause of death among women in China, with 1.1 million new cases annually. China’s breast cancer mortality has doubled over the past 30 years. Diagnosis tends to be made when the women are older and already in Stage III/IV, compared to Western countries where patients generally are diagnosed earlier and…

The McKinsey Quarterly has named articles by Harvard Business School professors Teresa Amabile and Cynthia Montgomery to its 2012 list of the journal’s 10 most popular articles. Amabile and co-author Steven Kramer were recognized, at number two, for “How Leaders Kill Meaning at Work,” an examination of how senior executives routinely undermine creativity, productivity, and…

When it comes to international relations (IR), Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Stephen Walt would suggest less testing and more conceiving. Walt and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago believe “downgrading theory and elevating hypothesis testing is a mistake,” when it comes to IR. The authors even call it “the road to ruin”…

Mercury released into the air and then deposited into oceans is increasingly contaminating seafood commonly eaten by people in the United States and globally, report scientists from Dartmouth College, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), and colleagues from other institutions in new research in the current issue of the journal Environmental Research and a companion report. The…

This year, the partnership between the Office for Sustainability, the Office of Career Services, and Green Building Services will expand sustainability-focused offerings for students during Wintersession to include a full day of sustainable tours, and three days of shadowing experience. Students interested in Harvard’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction goal, energy auditing, green building, and other green…

A visit to homes of disadvantaged mothers and at-risk newborns can provide a health care team with unique insights into how a family is faring—more than might be revealed at often rushed visits at a clinic or hospital. This was one of the insights shared at the 7th Annual Maternal and Child Health Symposium, titled…

It should come as no surprise that the health care systems of the United States and India differ in many ways, but what may be surprising is the amount they have in common. This fact—and what each country can learn from the other as it pursues improvements in health care—was the subject of a talk…

In order to spread disease inside the human body, the malaria parasite must evade the human immune system—which it does remarkably well. Now, researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have uncovered details about the mechanism by which the parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, avoids detection—it changes a critical protein on its surface that it uses as…

No matter where they live, how much education they have, or what their incomes are, people have very similar perceptions on the impact of diseases and injuries. This finding – counter to the prevailing belief that people throughout the world view different health conditions in very different ways depending on their culture or individual circumstances…

On Dec. 11, Harvard Law School’s Program on the Legal Profession (PLP) and the Indian School of Business (ISB) co-hosted a major international conference on the future of corporate business in India and the role of the legal profession. The event was held at the ISB campus in Hyderabad, India. The conference is part of…

A new study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers found that coffee consumption lowered women’s risk of type 2 diabetes by eight percent. Men lowered their risk four percent by drinking regular coffee and seven percent for decaf. The findings, which drew on data from the approximately 80,000 women and 40,000 men in…

Harvard Law School Professor William Alford ’77 was a participant and panelist at major events on the political and legal future of China, held recently at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Fairbank Center at Harvard. On Nov. 28, Alford spoke on a panel titled “Rule of…

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank ’77 (D-Mass.) will retire from the U.S. Congress in December after 32 years in Washington, where he earned a reputation as one of Congress’s most progressive members on civil rights, military spending and financial regulation. The Harvard Law Bulletin caught up with Frank in mid-July—not long after his marriage to Jim…

On Friday, Dec. 7, Harvard’s Japanese Language Program and the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies co-hosted an award ceremony and reception honoring Harvard students, who have excelled in Japanese language courses and who have achieved distinction in Japan-related essays. Marissa McGarry and Tatyana Avilova, a junior and senior in the college respectively, both received Tazuko…

The Nieman Fellows at Harvard have selected Marcela Turati of the Mexican news magazine Proceso as recipient of the Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism. Turati was chosen for her coverage of the drug war and her role in protecting and training members of the media. She is a standard-bearer for…

Harvard-Yenching Librarian James Cheng brought together his colleagues from Ivy League and non-Ivy League schools to discuss how East Asian research libraries can better collaborate to ensure their valuable collections are accessible for scholarly research. “Harvard cannot do it all alone,” said Cheng. “Collaboration is a timely topic for us all, and while we are…

Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain has been named among the 100 Foreign Policy Global Thinkers for 2012. The annual list from Foreign Policy (FP) “presents a unique portrait of 2012’s global marketplace of ideas and the thinkers who make them.” This year’s list also features Alex Macgillivray ’00, who serves as general counsel for…

The Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP) at Harvard Law School recently welcomed Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former president of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste José Manuel Ramos-Horta to the IGLP Honorary Council. As a member of the honorary council, Ramos-Horta will advise the IGLP, strengthen its ability to mentor young scholars, and…

A new study led by HSPH’s Dariush Mozaffarian, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology, finds that fish oil capsules with omega-3 fatty acids failed to prevent the onset of atrial fibrillation, a heart arrhythmia that often follows cardiac surgery and increases patients’ risk for stroke. The study analyzed health outcomes from an international trial of…

The Labrary, open for public exploration through December 21, is a storefront space envisioned and realized by students in Harvard’s Library Test Kitchen course. Projects that explore and celebrate the library of the future include: Bookface, Nicholas Rivard Bookface is an online photo opera that invites Labrary visitors to reflect on their relationship with the…

The Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies is very pleased to announce that Elaine Papoulias has been selected as its new executive director. Papoulias is the former director of the Kokkalis Program on Southeastern and East-Central Europe at the Harvard Kennedy School, and is a long-time affiliate of CES and co-chair of the center’s…