Featured series 
Tag: warfare and conflict
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Health
War-related stress associated with increased risk of asthma
The trauma experienced during war may increase the risk of developing asthma, according to the results of a new study by Harvard researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), and researchers at Kuwait University. The new study of Kuwaiti civilians who endured the…
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Science & Tech
New calculations suggest economic cost of Iraq war much larger than previously recognized
A paper presented to the annual Allied Social Sciences Association meeting in Boston, in a session jointly sponsored by the American Economic Association and the Economists for Peace and Security, suggests that the costs of the Iraq war are much higher than previously reckoned, with conservative to moderate estimates ranging from slightly less than a…
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Campus & Community
Ninety percent of U.S. wounded survive
For an article in the Dec. 9, 2004 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Atul Gawande, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, gathered data on casualties and talked with surgical teams that served near the front lines in Iraq. He concludes that…
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Health
Researcher studies effects of terrorist attacks on office workers near WTC site
Since 1971, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has conducted 1,200 investigations into indoor air. Last fall, the agency undertook an investigation unlike all the others. Aided by a Harvard School of Public Health scientist, Ashok Nimgade, a NIOSH research team evaluated the physical and mental health problems of office workers near “ground…
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Science & Tech
Undergraduates observe Rwandan attempts at justice
The Rwandan genocide memorial was a tiny one-room church, pervaded still by a penetrating stench. On a table in the church was a pile of human skulls and femurs, a startling reminder of the people who sought shelter there in 1994 when the killers came calling. “It just struck me that in this one church…
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Science & Tech
Structuring 21st century government for homeland defense
A report by Kennedy School of Government lecturer Elaine C. Kamarck, “Applying 21st Century Government to the Challenge of Homeland Security,” offers some specific recommendations: — Create a National Terrorism Intelligence Center within the FBI to fuse intelligence gathering capabilities of national security agencies with investigative resources of law enforcement — Increase protection at the…
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Science & Tech
Physicians warn of nuclear terrorist threat
In a new study, Lachlan Forrow, director of ethics support services at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. and his co-authors used software developed by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency to calculate the impact of a 12.5 kiloton nuclear explosion –- the same size as the…
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Science & Tech
SPH professor finds Taliban inmates dying, in need of care
Jennifer Leaning is a professor in the Harvard School of Public Health’s Department of Population and International Health. She is also one of Physicians for Human Rights’ founders. In January 2002, Leaning traveled to Afghanistan to investigate the conditions under which Taliban prisoners were being held. While the investigators found no evidence that the prisoner…
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Science & Tech
Indivisible territory and ethnic war
Monica Duffy Toft is assistant professor of public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and assistant director of the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Toft has studied the causes of ethnic war and developed a theory based on territory. She says that “Attempts to…
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Science & Tech
Survey shows Americans not panicking over anthrax
In the wake of biological terror attacks perpetrated by unknown persons sending anthrax-laced letters through the U.S. mail, the Harvard School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launched their Survey Project on Americans’ Response to Biological Terrorism. The first report of the ongoing survey, released on Nov. 8, 2001, found that most…
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Science & Tech
Strong student support found for war
American college students strongly support U.S. war objectives in Afghanistan aimed against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist network, according to a survey conducted by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The survey was released in early November 2001. Support among undergraduates for air strikes…
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Science & Tech
U.S. stepped aside during Rwandan genocide
Samantha Power, executive director of the John F. Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, conducted a three-year-long investigation into what the United States government knew, didn’t know, and chose to do during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Based on hundreds of interviews and hundreds of pages of declassified government documents, Power’s conclusion finds…
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Science & Tech
New report highlights safe, secure method for managing spent nuclear fuel
A joint Harvard University/University of Tokyo team of nuclear energy, nonproliferation, and waste management experts concludes in a new study that technologies are available to store spent nuclear fuel from hundreds of nuclear power plants around the world safely and securely for decades to come. To overcome political obstacles that have limited options for storage…