Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Robert Caro and reporter Beth Macy, who both studied at Harvard as Nieman Fellows, have won two of the three 2013 J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards. Caro will receive the $10,000 Mark Lynton History Prize for his profound understanding of President Lyndon B. Johnson while Macy will be honored with the…

Harvard School of Public Health-affiliated physicians were among the hospital emergency department staff called upon to care for victims of the explosions at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Stephanie Kayden, M.P.H. ’06, was the senior physician in charge of the emergency room at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) that day. A faculty member…

The Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) is hosting its annual auction at the Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub in Memorial Hall on Tuesday, April 23. Auction proceeds go directly toward supporting PBHA’s Summer Urban Program (SUP), a network of 12 student-run summer camps that benefit more than 800 children in Boston and Cambridge. This year’s event honors Mel King,…

After Monday’s tragic events at the Boston Marathon, the Kennedy School’s annual Public Service Week began on a somber note. Yet as the Shorenstein Center welcomed Alan Khazei, founder and chief executive officer of Be the Change Inc., co-founder of City Year, and HKS adjunct lecturer, the focus on service and policy seemed timely. Shorenstein Center…

In online learning, there is a sense that everything should be online. We have held a series of town halls across campus to discuss edX/HarvardX. While highly regarded, a number of attendees always came up to me at the end to say, “Why wasn’t this done online? Why didn’t you flip this talk?” The point of the…

The Arnold Arboretum is launching a new series of free public events this spring, each highlighting outstanding plant collections at their peak. Collections Up Close events delve into the diversity of the Arboretum’s Living Collection and celebrate thoughtful observations of the natural world. Through staff-led tours, fun science and art activities for kids, scavenger hunts,…

Privately insured surgical patients who had a complication provided hospitals with a 330% higher profit margin than those without a complication, according to new research from Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health system innovation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Boston Consulting Group, Texas Health Resources, and…

A living fossil with an ancestry dating back some 270 million years, Ginkgo biloba stands out in the plant world as an object of fascination. A deciduous gymnosperm that persists as a single genus and species, ginkgo offers scientists a unique glimpse at our botanical and evolutionary past. To celebrate this relict species and explore…

As an enthusiastic supporter of the Special Olympics who has worked for more than two decades with Special Olympics International, Harvard Law School Professor William P. Alford welcomed the opportunity to help bring about the 2013 Special Olympics World Winter Games, held in PyeongChang, Korea, earlier this year. He explains that the millions of athletes…

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has announced the appointment of an advisory committee on Massachusetts judicial nominations to solicit, interview, and comment on applications for federal District Court vacancies in Springfield and Boston. Warren will review the work of the committee and will ultimately recommend judicial nominees to President Obama. The advisory committee is composed of…

Several members of the Harvard Law School faculty and more than a dozen alumni were named to The National Law Journal’s list of 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America. In publishing its first list since 2006, the journal said its goal was to identify members of law’s power elite. The list recognizes the 100 lawyers…

International conference “Painting Beyond Itself: The Medium in the Post-Medium Condition,” held last weekend at the Sackler Museum, was a smashing success with overflowing attendance during the conference’s two days. Plans for a book about the conference are in the works. The event was organized by Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, the William Dorr Boardman Professor of Fine…

Harvard School of Public Health Dean Julio Frenk joined hundreds of scientists, doctors, and technical experts from around the world to launch the Scientific Declaration on Polio Eradication on April 11. The world is closer than ever to eradicating polio, with just 223 cases in five countries last year. To capitalize on this time-limited opportunity to finally end the…

Contrary to popular belief, women generally experience the same coronary artery disease (CAD, or cardiovascular disease) symptoms — including chest pain, pressure, and/or tightness — as men, Catherine Kreatsoulas, research fellow in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), said in an interview with MedPage Today on April 8,…

In the largest-ever study of its kind, an international collaboration of hundreds of scientists has uncovered 74 new genetic markers linked to three common hormonal cancers—breast, prostate, and ovarian—thus setting the stage for new treatments, targeted screening, and a greater understanding of how these diseases develop. The findings were outlined in a series of 13…

David J. Mooney, Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has been named among five recipients of the 2013 Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award. Presented by the Harvard Graduate Student Council on April 10, the award honors members of the faculty “who go above and…

Keith Richburg, fellow at the Institute of Politics and China correspondent for The Washington Post from 2009-13, recalled his first trip to China in 1985 and said that the biggest difference between China then and now is the Internet. “The Internet has really changed everything,” he said at a Shorenstein Center event on Tuesday, “particularly…

National Public Health Week (NPHW), being celebrated during the first week of April, focuses on what U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin calls the “extraordinary” returns that come from investments in public health initiatives. In a video marking the beginning of NPHW—organized by the American Public Health Association to raise awareness about public health—Benjamin cited examples such as routine…

The François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard organized a conference on Monday, April 8, that brought to light many of the challenges facing the Roma in Europe. Panelists addressed issues of violence, discrimination, and segregation, and brought together scholars, practitioners, and advocates – many of whom were Roma themselves. The…

An online engineering course in circuits and electronics — created by MIT as an MITx course for the edX platform and offered to San Jose State students for the first time last fall — will be made available to as many as 11 other CSU campuses. The expansion will benefit thousands of students from nearly…

Death rates are rising at rural hospitals that serve many poor and elderly people—and the reason may be their inability to provide the most up-to-date treatment, according to a new Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) study. Given this finding, HSPH researchers say the hospitals may need further help to provide care for these vulnerable…

Harvard was one of seven college and universities recently honored by the EPA with Food Recovery Challenge Achievement Awards. “These New England colleges and universities are setting a great example by preventing more than 2528 tons of food scraps from disposal by using them for higher and better uses, including food donation and composting,” said…

A report released April 2, 2013 by the Center for American Progress found that states with the highest rates of gun violence have the weakest gun laws. The findings reinforce those of previous studies, said Deborah Azrael, director of research at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. Alaska ranked first in gun deaths — 20.28 deaths…

As nations struggle with the health consequences associated with physical inactivity — 5.3 million deaths per year, according to a 2012 study published in Lancet and led by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researcher I-M Lee — they may gain insight from China’s longstanding support for bicycling, which can provide an affordable way to get exercise. Anne Lusk,…

EdX, the not-for-profit online learning enterprise founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Stanford University announced a collaboration to advance the development of edX’s open source learning platform and provide free and open online learning tools for institutions around the world. The agreement is expected to lead to new features and…

When Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Bartholet ‘65 and Jessica Budnitz ’01, HLS lecturer on law, founded the Child Advocacy Program at Harvard Law School more than eight years ago, they intended the program to serve as a model for other law schools. They intended the program to educate law students about the importance of…

The Board of Veterans’ Appeals denies a soldier’s claim for disability benefits for an injury to his lower extremities. But the decision is handed down while the soldier is serving in Afghanistan, and he doesn’t realize he has the right to appeal until after he returns from his deployment—after the appeal deadline has passed. For…

Harvard Law School Professor I. Glenn Cohen ’03 and Gideon A. Schor ’89 recently filed an amicus brief on behalf of Eric S. Lander in a pending Supreme Court case that will address whether human genes are patentable. The case, Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, No. 12-398, which will be argued on April…

Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder that directly affects 5.4 million Americans. In 2013, the direct costs of caring for those with Alzheimer’s will total an estimated $203 billion, including $142 billion in costs to Medicare and Medicaid. Despite advances in drug research, Alzheimer’s is the only leading cause of death in the U.S.…

The U.S. health sector and the health of Americans will suffer numerous adverse effects from budget “sequestration,” writes Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) health care policy expert John McDonough in a March 20, 2013 article in the New England Journal of Medicine. Under this “sequestration”—the result of the inability of Congress and President Barack Obama to agree…