Featured series 
Tag: risk management
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Campus & Community
Harvard University endowment earns 21.4 percent return for fiscal year
Harvard University announced today that its endowment earned a 21.4 percent return for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2011.
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Science & Tech
Major moral decisions use general-purpose brain circuits to manage uncertainty
Harvard researchers have found that humans can make difficult moral decisions using the same brain circuits as those used in more mundane choices related to money and food. These circuits, also found in other animals, put together two critical pieces of information: How good or bad are the things that might happen? What are the…
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Science & Tech
New busing controversy flares up
James Hammitt, professor at the School of Public Health, and his colleagues have spent the past three years doing risk analyses of buses with conventional diesel engines and emission-controlled diesel engines versus buses that run on natural gas. To compare, the researchers used a conventional measurement known as the quality-adjusted life-year (QALY). It says essentially…
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Science & Tech
Boston bike messengers experience very high injury rate
Bike couriers have become as a much a part of the urban landscape as sky-scrapers and traffic-clogged streets. Boston messengers collectively make between 3,000 and 4,000 deliveries on a given day. It may seem obvious that messengers work in dangerous conditions, quickly maneuvering around cars and pedestrians during peak congestion times. But little is known…
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Science & Tech
Bad dental health could affect military readiness
Phillip Dexter Woods is a dentist and an Army reservist. Until he graduated in June 2002, Woods was also a student in a master’s program at the Harvard School of Public Health. As a student, Woods was particularly interested in studying the dental health of Army recruits and their resulting availability for deployment. What he…
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Science & Tech
Your community may be harmful to your health
In 1996 the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention reported that 50 percent of all cancer risk could be eliminated though a modified diet, increased exercise, limited alcohol intake and cessation of tobacco use. However, to achieve such a significant reduction, it is necessary to develop public policies that hinge on our current scientific knowledge of…
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Science & Tech
Analysis of potential mad cow risk in U.S. finds little chance of disease spread
The Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (HCRA), part of the Harvard School of Public Health, performed an analysis for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to determine what the effects would be if “mad cow” disease were introduced into the United States. Mad cow disease, which is the popular term for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, has not…
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Science & Tech
For billion-dollar deals, risk allocation is key
Not too long ago, when dot-com fever was at its peak, observers of the business world oohed and aahed over venture capital transactions involving millions of dollars. From researcher Benjamin Esty’s perspective, however, these deals seemed like small change. His research, after all, focuses on projects much bigger than the latest e-commerce enterprise. “Most of…
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Science & Tech
Drivers place children in rear seat because of new law
A Rhode Island law that requires that children sit in the back and wear proper restraints imposes fines of $30 for violation of the rear seating requirement and $150 for violation of the restraint requirement. The law was passed after research by Harvard Center for Risk Analysis Director John Graham and others showed that, nationwide,…