There currently is not enough scientific evidence to recommend that healthy postmenopausal women should take low daily doses of vitamin D and calcium to reduce bone fracture risk, the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) reported in guidelines published online February 26, 2013 in the Annuals of Internal Medicine. The federal government’s expert panel on…

David Eisenberg envisions a time when doctors learn not just biology and chemistry—but cooking in an effort to help more patients live healthier lives. Given recent alarming increases in diabetes and other obesity-related ailments, Eisenberg, a doctor, associate professor of nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), and executive vice president of the Samueli Institute,…

The Harvard Leadership Conference is the only conference to be sponsored by the Harvard Graduate Council, the official student government for Harvard’s 12 graduate and professional schools. This year’s conference will be held at Harvard’s beautiful Northwest Science Building on Sat., March 9. The conference has a unique format in that the attendees have a…

A new poll released today shows a large gap between parents’ perceptions of their children’s weight and expert definitions. According to their parents, 15% of children are a little or very overweight, while national data suggest more than twice as many, or 32% of all children, are overweight or obese. The poll was conducted by NPR, the…

Nicholas D. Kristof, columnist for The New York Times, will address an audience of students, faculty, journalists and members of the public on Tuesday, March 5, at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The program begins at 6 p.m. in the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, and…

On Feb. 4, more than 70 Harvard Law School students, faculty, and other members of the Harvard community gathered in Wasserstein Hall to hear Enver Hasani, president of the Constitutional Court of Kosovo, speak on “European Self-Determination and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on Kosovo.” The nine-member Constitutional Court of Kosovo…

How do we know if we’re looking at the three-dimensional world or at a kind of trompe l’oeil image painted on the inside of a huge glass sphere? More to the point, how would a robot know? Blessed with brains and the power of biological computation, humans can compute the most likely explanation for what…

Political analyst Michael Tomasky, who writes for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, spoke to the Shorenstein Center about President Obama’s legacy, and how it compares to Reagan’s. There is not a clear comparison yet, Tomasky said, but he acknowledged that as Reagan shifted the “political gravity” to the right, Obama has shifted it back to the…

Nevin Scrimshaw, a nutritionist who pioneered the use of protein supplements to save the lives of children at risk of dying from malnutrition, passed away on February 8, 2013. He was 95. Scrimshaw, M.P.H. ’59, who received HSPH’s Alumni Award of Merit in 1995, devoted his seven-decade career to the field of international nutrition. Soon…

A small girl in Tanzania is getting ready to go to sleep. She is tucked safely in her bed, surrounded by mosquito netting. “Hey mosquito, I hear you, but you can’t get at me,” she says. “My net is treated.” The girl is featured in a short video clip that’s part of Sesame Workshop’s “Killimani…

Today, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study announces that this year’s Radcliffe Medal will be awarded to actor and arts advocate Jane Alexander. Radcliffe Day 2013 will celebrate the arts with a morning panel that unites leaders across the visual arts, writing, music, and theater. It will be immediately followed by the annual Radcliffe Day lunch,…

Curious about the crunching sounds coming from the basement of the Science Center? It’s the Greenbean Recycling Machine—Harvard’s latest recycling solution—hard at work. A redemption center for recycled goods, the Greenbean Machine is also a sorting whiz, gaming fanatic, and energy savings calculator. Created by Shanker Sahai and piloted on MIT’s campus in 2011, Greenbean…

Scholars and social media experts convened at Harvard Law School Feb. 6 to examine the ways in which electronic interactive media can sway human decision-making and behavior. The conference, “Social Media and Behavioral Economics,” was sponsored by Harvard Law School’s new Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy and created by the program’s director, Cass…

On Feb. 15, Harvard Law School hosted “Gun violence after the Newtown tragedy: What can legal, public health and other efforts do?” The panel discussion, moderated by HLS Dean Martha Minow, featured David Hemenway, professor of health policy and management and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center; Clinical Professor Ron Sullivan, director of…

If you’re examining the impact of air pollution control efforts in Denver, how do you statistically account for the fact that air pollution travels east—and that pollution reduction in the western United States could affect air quality in New England? Likewise, if you’re measuring the effectiveness of a particular HIV-prevention strategy in a village in…

Beginning last October, thousands of students from around the globe began studying at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) in a totally new way. They studied biostatistics and epidemiology, the building blocks of public health research, at home or in cafés, at any time of day or night, for a few minutes at a time…

Biomedical engineer Sujata Bhatia and computer scientist David C. Parkes were honored today with the Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). Established at SEAS in 2008 by Capers W. McDonald and Marion K. McDonald, the award recognizes leaders in engineering…

The large antiretroviral treatment (ART) scale-up in a rural community in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, has led to a rapid and dramatic increase in population adult life expectancy—a gain of 11.3 years over eight calendar years (2004-2011)—and the benefit of providing ART far outweighs the cost, according to new research from Harvard School of Public Health…

The national debate about gun violence has focused on mass shootings and assault weapons, but statistics show that most gun deaths are suicides. A number of recent articles and interviews featured Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) experts commenting on the topic. A February 13, 2013 New York Times article reported that nearly 20,000 of the 30,000…

EdX, the not-for-profit online learning enterprise founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), announced today the international expansion of its X University Consortium with the addition of six new global higher education institutions. The Australian National University (ANU), Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, McGill University and the University of Toronto in Canada,…

The amount of added sugars in soda and other sweetened beverages needs to be regulated, according to a Washington, D.C.-based nutrition advocacy group—and many Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers agree. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) filed a petition with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration calling for the agency…

About two dozen students, faculty and staff recently gathered for the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new Sound Studios Lab (S-Lab) in the Woodworth Listening Room of the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library. The new S-Lab features cutting-edge tools for research, composition, ethnographic field research and more. The state-of-the-art equipment and software was provided through the…

In a week-long January 2013 trip to China, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) Dean Julio Frenk brought an important message about public health: that it’s essential to continued human progress. Frenk’s trip, which took him to Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong, was aimed at strengthening HSPH’s existing ties in China, connecting with health sector leaders, and…

Krzystzof Gajos, assistant professor of computer science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), has been named a 2013 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. He is among 126 fellows, including four others at Harvard, selected from the United States and Canada this year on the basis of their “independent research accomplishments, creativity,…

Amid news of Time Warner possibly selling off most of its print magazines, Nancy Gibbs, deputy managing editor of Time magazine, told the Shorenstein Center that she is “enormously optimistic” about the future the journalism industry as a whole. Gibbs began by looking back at Time‘s history, with its founders inventing “curation and aggregation” of the…

The largest public health initiative in history dedicated to a single disease was announced unexpectedly during President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address in 2003: $15 billion over five years to fund a new international AIDS effort. For AIDS researchers at HSPH, the program known as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief…

A study by Harvard School of Public Health researchers that used for the first time a randomized, controlled study design to answer questions about how access to public insurance affects health, health care use, and other outcomes, has received a Health Services Research (HSR) Impact Award from Academy Health. The award recognizes outstanding research that…

On the go? Taking your lunch with you and conscientious environmental practice merge thanks to a new partnership with the Food Literacy Project and Harvard University Dining Services. Starting this February, Dudley House began piloting a reusable container program in Dudley Café aimed at reducing excess waste from disposable food containers and packaging. Graduate and…

Margaret Sullivan, public editor of The New York Times, outlined two opposing sides on the issue of how social media is changing traditional reporting and objectivity. To illustrate the distinction, Sullivan used examples written by two thought-leaders in journalism: Tom Kent, standards editor for the Associated Press, Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York…

Data from the HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations (HIPPO) study of greenhouse gases and aerosols are now available to the atmospheric research community and the public. This comprehensive dataset provides the first high-resolution, vertically resolved measurements of over 90 unique atmospheric species collected during a series of nearly pole-to-pole flights over the Pacific Ocean, across all seasons.…