Every spring after classes end at Norfolk County Agricultural High School (NCAHS), 10 juniors join the crew of the Arnold Arboretum as interns to learn how public gardens and arboreta care for their important plant collections. The students spend a month at the Arboretum working in the landscape and attending specialized classes. Marc Mertz, arboriculture…

A recent study showing that people covered by Medicaid may be less depressed than those who aren’t has prompted new debate about the value of such insurance, according to an article in the June 23 “Ideas” section of the Boston Globe. The article detailed the results of a May 2013 New England Journal of Medicine study co-authored by Katherine…

A new discovery about how cells move inside the body may provide scientists with crucial information about disease mechanisms such as the spread of cancer or the constriction of airways caused by asthma. Led by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), investigators found that epithelial cells…

The efforts of environmental scientist Chensheng (Alex) Lu to study the effects of pesticide exposure on honeybees were chronicled in a Boston Globe Magazine cover story on June 23. The article described how Lu, associate professor of environmental exposure biology in the Department of Environmental Health, and two Massachusetts colleagues — Northbridge beekeeper Ken Warchol and Holden entrepreneur Dick…

Women in the U.S. exposed to high levels of air pollution while pregnant were up to twice as likely to have a child with autism as women who lived in areas with low pollution, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). It is the first large national study to examine…

The Nikon Imaging Center at Harvard Medical School is the largest light microscopy facility on the Longwood campus. The staff are busy transitioning the light source for 12 of their 13 microscopes to more efficient solid-state light engines, replacing older metal halide bulbs that contain mercury. For Jennifer Waters, the center’s director, the move was…

Paying up to 40% more for organic food is worth the investment, wrote Chensheng (Alex) Lu, associate professor of environmental exposure biology at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), in a Wall Street Journal article on June 16, 2013. While researchers have yet to provide a definitive answer about whether more costly and harder-to-find organic food,…

Men who experience restless legs syndrome (RLS) may be at increased risk of dying earlier than men without the condition, according to a study by Xiang Gao, of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Restless legs syndrome is characterized by throbbing, pulling, or…

Two of Harvard Kennedy School’s (HKS) leading research centers will join forces. HKS Dean David T. Ellwood has announced that the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations will become the Hauser Institute for Civil Society and will reside within the Center for Public Leadership (CPL), effective July 1. The merger will offer an extraordinary opportunity to…

Cynthia Friend, Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Materials Science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), has been named as the next director of the Rowland Institute at Harvard. Friend brings extensive leadership experience to the directorship, having previously served as associate director of the Harvard Materials Science…

The International Center for Climate Governance (ICCG) has announced that Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs is the winner of the 2012 ICCG Climate Think Tank Ranking in the Global category. The Belfer Center was named by the ICCG as the most influential institution outside of Europe “working in the field…

Scott Evans, senior research scientist in the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard School of Public Health, has been awarded $5.6 million for his role in the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG), a new clinical research network funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. Evans…

The International Monetary Fund (IMF)and edX, the not-for-profit online learning initiative founded by Harvard University and MIT, announced a collaboration today to strengthen economic expertise worldwide. The collaboration will extend the reach of the IMF’s training courses in macroeconomics and finance to governments and the public through the edX platform. Pilots of the first two online courses—Financial Programming…

Harvard is planning to offer a dozen new online courses in the 2013-14 school year through HarvardX—the University’s branch of the online education platform edX— including new courses taught by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) faculty. The new courses are: PH201x, “Health and Society,” Ichiro Kawachi, lead instructor, professor of social epidemiology and chair of…

The Research Excellence in Administration Certificate at Harvard (REACH) program, a University-wide sponsored research training series for research administrators, is currently accepting applications for the fall 2013 offering of the Foundations level course. Applications for fall 2013 are due August 2, 2013. Please apply here. For more details, please visit the REACH website. If you would…

Mary Clare Altenhofen has been named the Herman and Joan Suit Librarian for the Fine Arts Library, while Sarah Adams has been named the Richard F. French Librarian of the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library. Both had been serving in those respective roles on an interim basis. “Sarah and Mary Clare have done an outstanding…

Harvard’s Library Lab, which enhances knowledge and library services with generous support from the Arcadia Fund, will launch its Showcase Year in December 2013. The Showcase Year will involve refining coding and development, creating documentation, sharing projects across Harvard and with other institutions, usability testing and comprehensively documenting the Library Lab program and process. The…

The Harvard Library, in collaboration with the Office of the Provost, IQSS Dataverse Network and HUIT, is launching the Research Data Collaborative (RDC) to develop research data management services. The RDC program’s FY14 goals include creation of tiered data management training for researchers and librarians, a University-wide data compliance network, effective data management plan support…

Can for-profit health ventures be an effective way to improve the health of poor people around the globe? Teams of students at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Harvard Business School (HBS), and Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) sought to answer that question during a semester-long course during which they worked with partner organizations in Nicaragua,…

A proposal for a mobile phone app to help college students manage their sexual health was named second runner-up in Harvard’s inaugural Deans’ Health and Life Sciences Challenge, hosted by the Harvard Innovation Lab (i-lab). The mobile phone app proposal came from one of two teams with HSPH students represented that were among eight finalists vying for funding…

At age four, Talita Jordan told her mother — a young, single parent — that she wanted to be a doctor. She stuck with the plan, becoming chief resident at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Now, a new graduate from Harvard School of Public Health with an M.P.H. in health policy, Jordan has…

In March 2012, MIT launched 6.002x, a free online version of MIT’s introductory course in circuits and electronics. The course, the first massive open online course (MOOC) offered by MITx — and also the inaugural offering from edX, the online-learning partnership later founded by MIT and Harvard University — sparked worldwide interest, along with a large amount…

Professor Benjamin I. Sachs is this year’s winner of the prestigious Albert M. Sacks-Paul A. Freund Award for Teaching Excellence, an honor bestowed each spring by the Harvard Law School graduating class. The award recognizes teaching ability, attentiveness to student concerns and general contributions to student life at the law school. A specialist in labor…

When Haben Girma ’13 was in college at Lewis & Clark, she had to solve a problem that few other students have faced. As a deaf-blind student with very limited sight and hearing, she had a hard time figuring out the food stations in her school’s cafeteria. As she explained in a speech on Jan.…

Conducting research projects among mothers and infants in Brazil in the mid-2000s, Paola Gilsanz got to see firsthand the effects of health inequalities. She saw that, all too often, good health was elusive if you were poor, lacking education, or didn’t have access to adequate care. Gilsanz is now on track to graduate with a…

Shemar Popplewell said it’s been a “pretty big struggle” to keep up his grades in math and other subjects at Roxbury Prep Charter School in Boston where he is an eighth-grader. Sometimes it’s hard to focus on schoolwork, he said, because he runs a landscaping business with his cousin on the weekends to earn money.…

Ambassador Stephen W. Bosworth, who transformed Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy during his 12 years as dean, is joining Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs as a senior fellow. Belfer Center Director Graham Allison said Bosworth would bring to the Kennedy School a wealth of experience as a…

Federico Capasso, Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), has been selected to receive the Humboldt Research Award. The prestigious award is granted by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to “outstanding researchers at the peak of…

Khanichi Charles knows the value of mentoring. Without it, she wouldn’t have discovered her passion for scientific research, let alone apply to Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). So despite long hours in the lab working towards her Ph.D. in biological sciences, which she expects to earn in August, Charles makes time to be a…

EdX, the not-for-profit online learning enterprise, released its learning platform via open source license on June 1 and today released details of the first educational institutions and organizations that are contributing code to the platform. In addition to the early and continuing contributions of edX founding partners, MIT and Harvard, xConsortium members such as Berkeley…