After an extremely successful inaugural season in 2011, the popular regional bike share program Hubway will reopen Thursday, March 15, 2012 with approximately 60% of stations live and operational. All five Harvard-sponsored stations in Allston and Longwood will be operational and stocked with bikes Thursday morning: Longwood Medical area at the Avenue Louis Pasteur at…

Later this month, the Supreme Court will hear challenges to the constitutionality of the landmark health care reform law known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA). On February 2, the law was tested by HSPH students in a public health law class taught by Professor Michelle Mello. “It’s the most significant piece of public health…

In his February 26, 2012, Health Stew blog on Boston.com, HSPH’s John McDonough, professor of the practice of public health and director of the Center for Public Health Leadership, writes that he is encouraged by recent comments from Aetna CEO and President Mark Bertolini that the end of health insurance companies doing business as usual…

Sometimes, it seems that a Ph.D. in the humanities leads only toward a faculty career. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, with FAS Office of Career Services, Office of Undergraduate Education, and FAS Division of Arts and Humanities will present two programs exploring the many directions the Ph.D. can take students beyond the professoriate.…

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard has awarded the $20,000 Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism to the Los Angeles Times for its six-part series “Billions to Spend.” During an 18-month investigation, the newspaper found that a $5.7 billion program to rebuild nine community colleges in Los Angeles was plagued with serious problems including…

David C. Bell, an expert on imaging techniques for nanoscale research in applied physics and materials science, has been appointed Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Electron Microscopy at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). The appointment officially took effect January 1, 2012. A physicist by training, Bell also manages the…

Bottled water enhanced with vitamins—and loaded with sugar—gets low marks from Walter Willett, chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health. They are “unequivocally harmful to health,” he told the Washington Post in a February 28, 2012, article on so-called healthy foods that people should avoid. “Whether vitamins dissolved in water…

Nathan Eagleis an expert in how to use cell phone data to predict and influence human behavior. And he thinks that cell phones could be the next big thing in public health. That’s because cell phone data could shed light on behavior connected to health issues. Researchers could potentially predict disease outbreaks by studying cell…

This year’s Academy Award for Best Picture may have gone to “The Artist,” but another Oscar-nominated film was a winner on a different level for a group of Harvard Kennedy School students. In 2010, Greenwood, Miss., hosted the vast majority of the shooting for ”The Help,” a story of racial segregation and domestic workers in…

Oil producing countries may exercise profound influence over American driving habits, but a new Harvard Kennedy School faculty research paper shows the U.S. federal and state taxes also play an important role. “Gasoline Taxes and Consumer Behavior” finds that even small changes in gasoline taxes affect consumer behavior and that taxes affect behavior even more…

The same combination of strategies deployed by parents to raise their children can also be used effectively by organizations working together in the public sector to achieve a common goal. That’s the finding of a new Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Faculty Working Paper. “’Hard,’ ‘Soft,’ or ‘Tough Love’: What Kinds of Organizational Culture Promote Successful…

The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., has won the 2011 Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers for “Twisted Truth: A Prosecutor Under Fire,” a three-part series reported by J. Andrew Curliss about prosecutorial misconduct by Durham’s district attorney Tracey Cline. The Taylor Award is presented each year by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism…

Harvard’s connections in India—research collaborations, academic exchanges and partnerships, business ventures involving alumni and faculty—have expanded in recent years, in tandem with the country’s rapid growth. Those connections, including efforts spearheaded by Barry R. Bloom, Atul Gawande, and Richard Cash of Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), are outlined in the March-April issue of Harvard…

There are no ifs, whys, or butts about Harvard Kennedy School’s new smoke-free policy. As of March 1, the entire HKS campus is smoke-free, meaning that smoking is prohibited inside any campus building or outside on HKS grounds, including the courtyard, and within 25 feet of building entrances, outdoor air intakes and windows. “We make…

The tragic impact of war and corruption in Afghanistan; developmental pediatrics in inner-city communities; the current state of philanthropy for organizations serving women and girls: If asked where at Harvard these subjects were recently discussed, one of the last places someone might suggest is Harvard Divinity School (HDS). And yet all three were topics at…

A new animated video about cholera—how people get infected, how it spreads, and how to treat it—is drawing attention from health workers around the globe. The video’s producer, Deborah Van Dyke, is a nurse practitioner in Vermont, a longtime aid worker for Doctors Without Borders, and a 1993 graduate of Harvard School of Public Health.…

Nutritious snacks don’t have to bust budgets, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers conclude in a new study that analyzed the cost of foods served in YMCA after-school programs in four U.S. cities. While the prices of individual healthy snacks are typically higher than those of their processed-food counterparts, the researchers found simple strategies…

Children in the U.S. whose activity choices, interests, and pretend play before age 11 fall outside those typically expressed by their biological sex face increased risk of being physically, psychologically, and sexually abused, and of suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by early adulthood, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard School…

Alan Rusbridger, editor of the British-based Guardian newspaper, will address an audience of students, faculty, journalists and members of the public on Tuesday, March 6, 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 is sponsored by the Joan…

These are challenging times for American foreign policy. Violent government crackdowns against pro-democracy protesters in the Middle East, new saber rattling in Tehran, and a fragile European Union under the weight of a widespread debt crisis underscore the difficulties facing U.S. policymakers and their allies. Here is a sampling of perspectives from several Harvard Kennedy…

Former ambassador to South Korea expresses optimism for future relations between the U.S. and North Korea, but remains realistic. Donald Gregg told a group at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation last week (Feb. 17), it will take years to thaw the icy divide formed between the countries during the Cold War and re-chilled after…

Active duty Navy Commander and 2011 Harvard Extension School Master of Liberal Arts (A.L.M.) grad Ted Johnson has been selected to participate in the prestigious White House Fellows program. Of the 15 chosen to participate, more than half hold degrees from Harvard, with Johnson being the first Harvard Extension School graduate selected for the program.…

Growing out of a longstanding commitment to sharing knowledge about the natural world, the Arnold Arboretum’s educational programming for children began in the 1980s with the introduction of field study opportunities in the historical landscape. While this programming continues to thrive today, the Arboretum’s Boston Teachers Union School collaboration is designed to provide science instruction…

As part of the Harvard College General Education course Science of the Physical Universe 24: “Introduction to Technology & Society,” students and members of the Harvard community are invited to check out market ready alternative vehicle technologies in automobiles that are presently being sold. Day & Time: Wed, Feb. 15, 1-2:30 p.m. Location: In front…

Katia Bertoldi, assistant professor of applied mechanics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), has won a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The honor is considered one of the most prestigious for up-and-coming researchers in science and engineering. Bertoldi’s research involves the use of continuum…

As revolutionaries go — and he is one, embracing a dynamic new conception of humanistic research in the digital age — Jeffrey Schnapp is really quite grounded. He’s a medievalist, for one thing, a Dante scholar with impeccable credentials and a long track record in all the traditional scholarly forms. And although he founded a…

From exploring citizen participation in rural China to assessing how public deliberations in California can engage citizens, HKS’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation continues to be at the forefront of understanding democracy’s challenges. In early February 2012, the Center announced a deepened commitment to studying democracy by devoting $350,000 each year to faculty…

Using whole-genome sequencing, a team led by researchers from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Broad Institute has traced the path of the E. coli outbreak that sickened thousands and killed more than 50 people in Germany in summer 2011 and also caused a smaller outbreak in France. It is one of the…

People with higher-than-average levels of omega-3 fatty acids in their blood may be roughly 30 percent less likely than those with the lowest levels to develop atrial fibrillation, according to new Harvard School of Public Health research. Atrial fibrillation is a dangerous condition that tends to strike the elderly and can lead to stroke or…

Over the past decade, scientists have produced a flurry of studies exploring the role of genetic (nature) and environmental factors (nurture) in youth depression, but there has been little consensus on how depression is jointly impacted by specific genes and external factors, such as poverty, abuse, and negative family relationships. The lack of a clear…