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Africa
Regional
Harvard President Drew Faust broke bread with about 60 graduate and undergraduate students from various African countries Thursday evening (Oct. 15) to get acquainted and solicit advice on her upcoming trip to southern Africa in November.
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Harvard Team Wins World Bank Award
Lebone Solutions, a collaboration between Harvard African undergraduates and university scientists, was among 16 groups selected by the World Bank in an international competition for grants of up to $200,000 to develop low-cost innovative technologies to light up Africa.
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Mosquitoes are wreaking havoc on children across Africa, killing one every 30 seconds with malaria. Those who do survive the disease fall behind in school, if they show up at all. Assistant Professor Matthew Jukes sees hope -- in antimalarial drugs, low-cost bed nets, and school-based health centers.
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For economists who study development, Africa remains a mystery. It's underdeveloped, but why? Disease? Dictators? Colonial rule? Nathan Nunn, an assistant professor of economics, believes he has found at least a partial answer. The slave trade, far from being a relic of the past, he argues, accounts for much of the continent's current economic woes.
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Social pressure keeps African AIDS patients in treatment
One of the surprises of the global AIDS epidemic has been the high level of adherence to antiretroviral drug treatment in sub-Saharan Africa, whose impoverished population is so beset with treatment hurdles that authorities once believed that there was little chance patients there would be able to stick to complex drug regimens.
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Botswana
The man and woman grin down from the large billboard overlooking the road to the hospital in Mochudi, a small town outside Botswana's capital of Gaborone.
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Ampheletse Medupe's headaches just wouldn't go away. Living in her small, neat home outside the African nation of Botswana's capital, the mother of four kept on as best she could until sores broke out on her face. Finally, she visited a doctor.
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Though there are signs that the Botswana AIDS epidemic is slowing, the disease remains the top cause of death in the southern African nation. HIV infection rates are down nationwide to 24 percent, while life expectancy, which had fallen from 64 in 1990 to 40, rose to 50 in 1997.
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While her classmates in Cambridge were shivering through a New England February, Sandy Bolm was sweltering in the heat of a Botswana summer, staring her future in the face in the labs of the Botswana-Harvard Partnership.
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Cameroon
Harvard biologists have determined that some African frogs carry concealed weapons: when threatened, these species puncture their own skin with sharp bones in their toes, using the bones as claws capable of wounding predators.
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Congo, Democratic Republic of the
Jennifer Scott: Being there for atrocity's survivors
Jennifer Scott worked hard to become a doctor. But when she faced the ills of women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she realized her technical skills weren't enough.
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Jocelyn Kelly: Seeking the whole picture of Congo violence
Jocelyn Kelly stood alone at the airport in Rwanda’s capital city of Kigali, wondering whether anyone would meet her. It was the summer of 2007 and Kelly, a student at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), was in Rwanda en route to one of the world’s most troubled places — the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
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Imani was just 15 when soldiers from the rebel group Interahamwe found her on the road in a remote region in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
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Michael VanRooyen: Rebuilding places that peace abandoned
“When they put the gun in my mouth, I decided it wasn’t so ridiculous after all.” In 1996, Michael VanRooyen was on a relief mission to Nyankunde Hospital, near Busia in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then called Zaire.
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As if afraid to break the spell, the two men talk in low voices — low voices for serious subjects. One man, an interviewer, asks about the other’s children, about his native tongue. He starts with easy questions before getting to the heart of the issue: horrific violence visited on women in this eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The United Nations estimates that 200,000 women were raped here over the past 12 years, 18,000 during the first nine months of 2008 alone.
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Ethiopia
Alumnus Works to Protect Ethiopians from Drought, Starvation
A Harvard Kennedy School alumnus is helping farmers in Ethiopia insure themselves against crop loss and starvation. Abera Tola MPA 1999 is Oxfam America’s regional director for Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia – an appropriate position for the native Ethiopian who has first-hand experience with many of the severe challenges facing people in that region.
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Ghana
In a lounge at Logan Airport in June, Audrey White ’10 turned to her traveling companions and said, “I’m getting on a plane, but I have no idea where I’m landing.”
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One evening in the fall of 2006, Sangu Delle and Darryl Finkton sat talking on the steps of Weld Hall. In Ghana, Delle, whose father works for the African Commission on Health and Human Rights Promoters, had grown up with firsthand awareness of human-rights abuses: he met refugees, sexual-assault victims, “people who had had limbs chopped off by warlords.”
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Mental Health through a New Lens
In Ghana, a country with a population of 24 million, the number of psychiatrists can be counted on one hand. This situation, typical for African countries, speaks to the state of—and the pressing need for—mental-health care there.
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Student Testimonial - Esther Yi; Ghana
Esther Yi, a sophomore History and Literature Concentrator from Ridgewood, New Jersey spent the summer 2008 in Ghana interning with the Accra Daily Mail, a private newspaper from Accra.
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Kenya
Beneath Talk of Unity, an Untidy Truth
The election violence in Kenya, which lasted for several weeks in late 2007 and early 2008, was an embarrassing incident for a country that enjoyed a place among Africa’s stablest and fastest-growing nations.
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It’s important to be fleet of foot in Kibera. Traversing trash piles, bobbing and weaving along the edges of open sewers, one must take care to step on dry ground whenever possible. Kibera, a section of Nairobi reputed to be Africa’s largest slum—no one really knows, as population estimates range from 300,000 to 1.3 million—is a place even many Kenyans fear to go.
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Kip Kitur ’09 plans to head home to help
While growing up in the Rift Valley Province in western Kenya, Kipyegon A. “Kip” Kitur milked goats and fed cattle before running to school. It was two miles away, uphill, past steep maize farms.
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Odinga optimistic about Africa’s democratic future
Kenya’s prime minister expressed optimism about the democratic future of Africa on Thursday (Sept. 24), saying that the era of African “big man” dictatorship is coming to a close and expressing hope that the coming decades are marked by a flowering of the African continent.
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Lesotho
Jim Yong Kim walked out of the small cinder block room where an underweight boy of 5 lay, his heart rate down to 115 from the dangerous 150 beats per minute at which it had been racing moments earlier. Kim stripped rubber gloves from his hands.
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After Years of Talk, Time For Action
Through a new academic program at Harvard called the Global Health Delivery Project, Kim, together with Bishop William Lawrence University Professor Michael Porter and Partners In Health co-founder Paul Farmer, the Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Social Medicine, are gathering examples of public health success stories from around the world.
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In the shadow of a hill where lepers once lived, a tuberculosis hospital designed for those infected with deadly, drug-resistant strains of the disease is giving hope to a new generation of medical pariahs in the tiny African nation of Lesotho.
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The tiny African nation of Lesotho is among those hardest hit by the raging twin epidemics of ADIS and tuberculosis. Harvard faculty members are advising the government and helping to revamp clinics and treat patients in the far-flung mountain regions of this poor country.
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"I just want to see how bad things are in the clinic," Jennifer Furin said, grabbing a stethoscope from her bag and heading out the door of the small stone house perched on a Lesotho mountainside. "It's a 'doctor fear' that someone is bleeding out while I'm standing here eating chocolate."
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Liberia
After bloody revolution: Bringing science back to Liberian classrooms
Adam Cohen and Ben Rapoport needed materials to conduct a science experiment, but supplies were hard to come by.
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Nigeria
Troubled by her country’s social inequalities, Johnson set out to craft a meaningful community-service project. The result was a performing-arts-themed camp for disadvantaged girls, held last summer in her native city, Ibadan.
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Nigerian lawyer is a champion of women
In 2002, a young Nigerian woman by the name of Amina Lawal -- pregnant and unmarried -- was tried for adultery under Shariah, Islam's traditional law. She was sentenced to be stoned to death, a fate that briefly riveted the attention of media worldwide.
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Rwanda
GSD Students Assist in Designing Hospital Prototype in Rwanda to Reduce TB Epidemic
In Rwanda, architecture is transmitting airborne disease rather than controlling it.
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Elisa Nabel ’11 spent the summer of 2008 in Rwanda doing medical research, but what really captured her interest was two young girls.
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Sierra Leone
David Sengeh ’10 has decided that the most important asset in development work is not experience. Nor is it training in economics, public administration, or medicine. What’s most important for development workers, he says, is humility.
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South Africa
Cutting in on the AIDS-TB Death Dance
On a hill in South Africa's KwaZulu Natal province, near the hall where Nelson Mandela delivered his last speech before prison and the station where Mahatma Gandhi was tossed off a train to begin his life's work, stands Edendale Hospital.
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One of the continent's richest nations, South Africa also has one of the world's highest HIV infection rates and is home to the world's biggest population of HIV-infected people, an estimated 5.5 million.
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Even though apartheid in South Africa ended more than a decade ago, public-school students still suffer ill-effects from the previously segregated education system because their teachers were trained under it.
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Fighting AIDS Now and in the Future
In the heart of the South African AIDS epidemic, at a medical school named for the nation's legendary anti-apartheid leader, a fight against a different sort of oppression is being waged.
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Pulling up service by the roots
When I learned about Grassroot Soccer, I signed up without even looking at the job description. I couldn’t believe that I had found an organization that combined my passion for soccer, interest in global health, and love for Africa.
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Shelter Amid a Health Care Storm
South Africa's Valley of 1,000 Hills is a broad and breathtaking natural contradiction, an enormous valley whose floor is crowded with hills large and small, as if nature wasn't quite sure what it was making.
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Few outsiders had ever heard of Tugela Ferry before a frightening outbreak began unfolding there in 2005: At the Church of Scotland hospital, a group of patients suddenly began dying; succumbing, as it turned out, to a tuberculosis "super-bug."
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Sudan
For “Lost Boy,” A Mission Found
Many people graduate from Harvard Kennedy School with a clear idea of how they’d like to put their training and newly gained credentials to use. But few graduates leave the school with a greater sense of urgency about their mission than Peter Biar Ajak MPA/ID 2009, who vowed to return to his native country immediately after June commencement.
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Tanzania
In a village in northern Tanzania in the summer of 2008, Rashmi Jasrasaria ’10 was leading a group of Tanzanian women in a discussion about HIV prevention, when one woman raised her hand with a question: “What if I ask my husband to wear a condom and he beats me?”
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Uganda
A Leap of Faith, and a Prayer Answered
In Busia, Uganda, a dusty, gritty, border town of 50,000, the main drag is lined with hotels that cater to truckers. At many of these, more than lodging is provided. The HIV infection rate is significantly higher here than elsewhere in Uganda.
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Student Testimonial - Bianca Verma; Uganda
Bianca Verma, a junior Social Anthropology Concentrator from Manlius, New York, spent the 2008 summer in eastern Uganda interning with the Foundation for the International Medical Relief of Children (FIMRC).
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Arctic and Antarctic
Regional
Microbes thrive in harsh, isolated water under Antarctic glacier
A reservoir of briny liquid buried deep beneath an Antarctic glacier supports hardy microbes that have lived in isolation for millions of years, researchers report this week in the journal Science.
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Researchers study glaciers on Earth's coldest desert
It's December, and undergraduate Jenny Middleton bundles up to face the cold. While all across campus, students, and faculty don their winter gear, Middleton is not preparing for the New England winter; she is preparing for an expedition through the Earth's coldest desert: the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica.
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Asia
Afghanistan
Working to lift the fog of war
Thousands of miles from his Harvard lab, Kit Parker is lugging a gun and his engineer’s sensibilities through the mountains south of Kabul, in Afghanistan’s Wardak and Logar Provinces.
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China
On May 2, Cyclone Nargis hit the coast of Myanmar, devastating the low-lying Irrawaddy delta with 120 miles-per-hour winds and a 12-foot tidal surge. Ten days later, an earthquake measuring 8 on the Richter scale struck China's mountainous Sichuan Province. Both events left thousands dead, missing, injured, and homeless, and focused the world's attention on the actions of China's and Myanmar's governments.
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While the developed countries of the West have grown rich and now are growing old, China may grow old before it grows rich.
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China could meet its energy needs by wind alone
A team of environmental scientists from Harvard and Tsinghua University has demonstrated the enormous potential for wind-generated electricity in China. Using extensive meteorological data and incorporating the Chinese government’s energy-bidding and financial restrictions for delivering wind power, the researchers estimate that wind alone has the potential to meet the country’s electricity demands projected for 2030.
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Harvard University Opens Office in Shanghai
Harvard Business School (HBS) Dean Jay O. Light and William C. Kirby, T.M. Chang Professor of China Studies and chairman of the Harvard China Fund, announced the opening of a Harvard office in Shanghai on July 2.
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On the road in the fifth century: Visions of heaven, hell
During the fifth century, travelers began to depart China more frequently than ever before, venturing outward from medieval cities to explore lands in Central and South Asia. A range of individuals eagerly took to the road, writing extensively about their journeys and returning home with elaborate accounts.
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One of the most extensive collections of rare Chinese books outside China will be digitized and made freely available to scholars worldwide as part of a six-year cooperative project between the Harvard College Library (HCL) and the National Library of China.
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Student Testimonial - Carelton Forbes; China
Carleton Forbes, a senior from Virginia majoring in Social Studies, spent one semester of his junior year studying in China.
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Student Testimonial - Joa Alexander; China
Joa Alexander, a junior East Asian Studies Concentrator from Tarrytown, New York, spent the 2008 summer in China studying intensive Chinese.
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Student Testimonial - Kyle Haddad-Fonda; China and Egypt
Kyle Haddad-Fonda, a senior concentrating in History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Issaquah, Washington, split the summer of 2008 between Beijing, China and Cairo, Egypt conducting thesis research on Sino-Arab relations from 1955 to 1958.
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‘Enormous changes’ in thirty years
In Chinese culture, the 60th birthday is an auspicious event. At that age, it is said that a person is at ease.
As the People’s Republic of China prepares to celebrate its 60th anniversary in October 2009, scholars gathered at Harvard University to ask: At 60, is the People’s Republic of China finally at ease?
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India
Falling in love with South Asian music
Wolf came to Harvard's Department of Music as an assistant professor in 1999, and received tenure in October 2007. His courses explore the musical traditions of South and West Asia, with a focus on India, Pakistan, and Iran. He also teaches students how to play the vina in his seminar on Karnatak (classical Indian) music.
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Mohan Sundararaj of HSPH harnesses the power of music to heal
It was 1998 and Mohan Sundararaj was frustrated. A medical student at India’s Sri Ramachandra Medical College and the child of two physicians, Sundararaj was committed to his medical education but frustrated by the demands that kept him from his other passion: the piano.
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Student Testimonial - Madeleine Shapiro; Delhi, India
I decided to go to India for a number of reasons, first and foremost being that I knew India was a place where I could make a tangible difference given the levels of poverty. Asha, the NGO I worked for, was an organization that had the mission I was looking for: to better the lives of the poor first through healthcare but from an overall holistic approach.
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Japan
Harvard Business School appoints Nobuo Sato Executive Director of Japan Research Center
Harvard Business School (HBS) has named Nobuo Sato executive director of its Japan Research Center (JRC) in Tokyo.
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Scholar Interns at Old Bookstore
Students of literature often find themselves among old books in the dark reaches of a library. But Harvard University student Peter Bernard has taken another tack, spending most days for the past two months combing the antiquated works at a 106-year-old bookstore in Tokyo's Kanda Jinbocho district.
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Works and Woods: Architecture and ecology in Japan
When you enter the Japanese house in the Boston Children's Museum, says Yukio Lippit '92, "you feel a little bit Alice in Wonderland-ish." Stepping into this nineteenth-century Kyoto merchant's house does feel like going down the rabbit hole.
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Kiribati
Global warming threatens his nation's existence, a president warns
During a talk at Harvard, the leader of the South Pacific island nation of Kiribati laid out an extraordinary plan that would scatter his people through the nations of the world as rising sea levels submerge the islands they have called home for centuries.
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Korea, South
In 1975, Kathleen Stephens was fresh out of Prescott College in Arizona when she arrived in Yesan, South Korea, as a Peace Corps volunteer. The country was still very poor and isolated. Most people in her village had never seen a Westerner, and it was hard to get a passport.
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Student Testimonial - Andrew Badger; South Korea
My experience as a Director’s Intern at the National Assembly in South Korea gave me a unique opportunity to see the inter-workings of a foreign government and the nature of East Asian democracy and political culture firsthand.
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Student Testimonial - Emily Bruemmer; South Korea
After studying Korean history and writing my thesis on Korean civil society during the colonial period, I was eager to spend more time in Korea, practice my Korean, and learn about Korean culture firsthand. I also hoped to gain work experience through my internship. This summer fulfilled all of these objectives and more.
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Student Testimonial - James Williamson; South Korea
When I signed up for the Harvard Summer School program in Korea I did not really know what to expect. I was looking for a summer abroad program for which I was qualified and which also appeared interesting to me. This program matched what I was looking for. I had no background in whatsoever in east asian history, yet for me that was a feature of the program since it meant that I would be learning things that were really new and I wanted to branch out beyond western Europe.
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Malaysia
Ashton: A Legacy Written in Trunk, Limb, and Leaf
Wearing little but cotton shorts, the four men huddled on a streambank deep in the Bornean rain forest. Water dripped from their soggy clothes, making muddy pools around their feet as they assessed the situation.
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Student Testimonial - Benjamin Gutierrez; Malaysia
After spending the summer of 2008 on Harvard Summer School¿s program in Borneo, Malaysia, Benjamin Gutierrez fulfilled his intention to change his concentration to Environmental Science and Public Policy.
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Myanmar
On May 2, Cyclone Nargis hit the coast of Myanmar, devastating the low-lying Irrawaddy delta with 120 miles-per-hour winds and a 12-foot tidal surge. Ten days later, an earthquake measuring 8 on the Richter scale struck China's mountainous Sichuan Province. Both events left thousands dead, missing, injured, and homeless, and focused the world's attention on the actions of China's and Myanmar's governments.
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Russia
How'd the Russians Get the H-bomb?
Ever hear of Elugelab? Until Oct. 31, 1952, it was an island on Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Then it vanished, consumed in the fireball of the world¿s first hydrogen bomb.
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Australia and Oceania
Fiji
Fijian girls succumb to Western dysmorphia
In 1982, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Anne E. Becker was still an undergraduate at Radcliffe when she traveled to Fiji for a summer of anthropology fieldwork.
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Papua New Guinea
New Guinea forest expands 'observatory'
Just getting there takes hours of hot, sweaty hiking through lowland Papua New Guinea forests: three hours from the road to the base camp, then another seven to the site. That's when the real work begins: tagging, measuring, and identifying 250,000 trees scattered over 50 hectares.
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Europe
Austria
Student Testimonial - Michael Schacter; Austria
Michael Schacter is a senior Music Concentrator from Westborough, Massachusetts. He spent the 2008 summer in Vienna, Austria studying German and improving his music composition at the Vienna Konservatorium.
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Germany
Student Testimonial - Ran Li; Germany
Ran Li is a sophomore Neurobiology Concentrator from Hudson, Ohio. He spent the 2008 summer in Germany with the Harvard Summer School Life Sciences and Culture Program in Bonn, Germany.
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Ireland
Genome of Irish potato famine pathogen decoded
A large international research team has decoded the genome of the notorious organism that triggered the Irish potato famine in the mid-19th century and now threatens this season’s tomato and potato crops across much of the United States.
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Italy
Student Testimonial - Kendra Boothe; Italy
Kendra Boothe was a summer intern at the Clinton Climate Initiative in Rome in the summer of 2008.
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Latin America and Caribbean
Brazil
Indigenous Culture Clarifies Nature and Limits of How Humans Measure
The ability to map numbers onto a line, a foundation of all mathematics, is universal, says a study published in the journal Science, but the form of this universal mapping is not linear but logarithmic.
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Student Testimonial - Anika Grubbs; Rio de Janiero, Brazil
Anika Grubbs (College '09) highlights her experiences living in Rio de Janeiro. After strengthening her Portuguese language skills in Clemence Jouet-Pastre's Harvard Summer School Program in Rio in 2007, Anika returned to Brazil for a human rights internship during the summer of 2008.
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Student Testimonial - Eric Rodriguez; Sao Paulo, Brazil
Eric Rodriguez (College '09) speaks about his experience living in Sao Paulo, Brazil from July to September 2008. Eric was a participant in the 2008 DRCLAS Summer Internship Program.
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Student Testimonial - Fabio Tran; Brazil
Fabio Tran, a Lemann Fellow at HKS, talks about his experience at the Kenndy School and its impact on efforts to help launch a social entrepreneurship venture focused on low-cost incubators for newborns (in Portuguese).
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Student Testimonial - Leah Boch; Brazil
Leah Boch, a senior Anthropology Concentrator from Providence, Rhode Island, spent the spring semester 2008 in Brazil on the School for International Training¿s Amazon Resource Management Program.
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Student Testimonial - Marcelo Cerullo; Coari, Brazil
Marcelo Cerullo (College '10) shares his experiences conducting field research on the impact of a gas pipeline project on regional development in Coari, Amazonas.
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Student Testimonial - Rosabelli Coelho-Keyssar; Petrolina, Brazil
Rosabelli Coelho-Keyssar (Harvard Kennedy School '08 & Lemann Fellow '08) talks about her decision to apply to HKS and the impact of her experience there (in Portuguese).
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Chile
Author Tells of Life-Changing Experience
In a room filled with excited family, friends, colleagues, and fresh-faced students considering their own postcollege adventures, Reifenberg discussed the two years spent in a foreign country that changed his life 20 years ago.
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For Santiago's Poor, Housing with Dignity
In this tidy development of row houses, 170 families who once lived illegally have become homeowners. Stay-at-home moms feel safe leaving their children in the front yard; some have started small businesses. It is a far cry from the lawless environment of the campamento, or squatter settlement, that sat on the same tract of land until 2004.
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Student Testimonial - Carolyn Buckley; Santiago, Chile
"When I first started working at the Foundation, I was somewhat nervous. I knew I loved working with kids but I had no idea what to expect volunteering with children who were going through such a horrible and debilitating disease. In the end it turned out to be one of the most challenging yet rewarding experiences of my life."
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Colombia
Uribe pushes for improved relations
Greeted with both praise and protest, Álvaro Uribe, president of the Republic of Colombia, expounded on his administration’s accomplishments in a speech at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum on Sept. 25. By turns presenting himself as a solemn academic, a charismatic statesman, and a shrewd politician, Uribe underscored his role as one of Latin America’s canniest leaders in a country wracked by violence from drug traffickers and insurgent forces.
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Cuba
President Raúl Castro’s principal contribution thus far to the lives of ordinary Cubans has been that television soap operas now start on time. He often reminds his fellow citizens of this seemingly impossible accomplishment, after decades during which his elder brother commanded the airwaves and disrupted all public and personal schedules.
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Student Testimonial - Harry Rimalower; Cuba
Harry Rimalower, a junior Visual and Environmental Studies Concentrator from Sherman Oaks, California, spent the fall semester 2008 with the Harvard College Program in Cuba.
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Dominican Republic
Student Testimonial - Adam Clark; Dominican Republic
Adam Clark, a sophomore Environmental Science and Public Policy Concentrator from Watertown, Massachusetts, spent the summer of 2008 in Boston and the Dominican Republic conducting research on the Impact of Human Stresses on Ant Communities.
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Haiti
Saintyl Louistess remembered the exact date she found out she had AIDS.
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A hospital opened in January where a year earlier cows grazed.
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Louise Ivers: A Higher Purpose
"I've had more children dying in my arms than most people have ever experienced in their whole lives," Ivers said.
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Living in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, most of Haiti's nine million people are subsistence farmers. Poverty and malnutrition are exacerbated by poor health care and a low vaccination rate.
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Paul Farmer remembers his patients and the lessons they've taught him, even the hard ones.
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Lake Peligre fills the valley floor, its dark blue waters a relief to the eye after hours winding through central Haiti's hot, treeless hills on the dusty, potholed road that passes for National Route 3.
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Honduras
Archaeological bookends in Copán Valley
A short drive from the main Maya ruins at Copán, a forested hillside holds a cluster of mounds that Peabody Museum archaeologists believe date from near the end of the great Maya civilization that once dominated the region.
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Jamaica
Jamaican lizards mark their territory
What does ageless fitness guru Jack LaLanne have in common with a Jamaican Lizard?
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Mexico
Casts of monuments preserve fading treasures
The carved stone monolith tells the story of Yax Pasaj Chan Yopaat, the 16th and last ruler of the Maya city of Copan, one of the most important sites in Maya history.
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Mexican program successful at reducing crippling health care costs
Seguro Popular, a Mexican health care program instituted in 2003, has already reduced crippling health care costs among poorer households, according to an evaluation conducted by researchers at Harvard University in collaboration with researchers in Mexico.
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Peabody teams will scan other endangered monuments
By January, the Peabody Museum’s Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Program hopes to be in Copán, Honduras, scanning the imposing but fragile hieroglyphic stairway, the longest inscription in the New World.
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Student Testimonial - Cesar Marquez; Mexico
César Márquez, a senior Psychology Concentrator from Elmwood Park, Illinois, spent the summer term 2008 in Oaxaca, Mexico interning at various hospitals within the region.
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Student Testimonial - Racquel Toldeo; Mexico City, Mexico
My project involves doing a stakeholder analysis of a new alcohol law that my boss is in the process of writing. The new law would be similar to a recent Brazilian law that imposes more restrictions and harsher punishments for those who drink and drive. We expect that the law is going to face significant opposition, especially from the alcohol industry and owners of bars and restaurants.
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Peru
Student Testimonial - Elizabeth Ryznar; Lima, Peru
The children's love, vivaciousness, and (unfortunate) vulnerability, changed my entire perspective on my future, shifting my focus to children's welfare -- something I would never have considered prior to my DRCLAS internship.
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Student Testimonial - Tarek Austin; Lima, Peru
Tarek Austin participated in the 2009 Harvard Summer Internship Program in Lima, Peru. For him, travelling to Latin America was a unique opportunity to consolidate his Spanish-speaking skills, to lend a hand in reducing poverty (in this case, educational poverty) in a less-developed country, and to learn to relate to different lifestyles by immersing himself in a new culture.
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Middle East and North Africa
Egypt
Student Testimonial - Kyle Haddad-Fonda; China and Egypt
Kyle Haddad-Fonda, a senior concentrating in History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Issaquah, Washington, split the summer of 2008 between Beijing, China and Cairo, Egypt conducting thesis research on Sino-Arab relations from 1955 to 1958.
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Iran
Forum Panelists Discuss Options for U.S.-Iran Talks
Less than a month before talks between the United States, Iran and other world powers begin, three distinguished experts met last night (September 16) at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum to discuss how the western world should handle such a controversial regime.
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Israel
Tanner lecturer, peacemaker Nusseibeh in search of the improbable
Nusseibeh, who is president of Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem, spoke to a crowd in Lowell Lecture Hall. His lectures, titled "Philosophical Reflections on the Israeli-Palestinian War," addressed various ways of thinking about political history as well as the role of the human will in determining, or shaping, that history.
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Global
Julio Frenk’s appointment as dean of the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) took effect on January 1, but his relationship with the school began long before.
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AIDS research symposium details advances
Harvard AIDS researchers detailed recent advances in the fight against the ongoing global pandemic, including new vaccine strategies, insights into the disease’s progression in the world’s hardest-hit regions, and new knowledge about the body’s immune response against infection.
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Can Students Launch Enterprises that Turn a Profit and Save Lives?
A poor mother in Ghana looking to buy anti-malaria pills for her baby has few options. Pharmacists, if there are any nearby, may charge more than she can afford, forcing her to seek medicine from a street vendor. But in open-air markets in Ghana, as in many developing countries around the world, there's a good chance those drugs will be fake...
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Climate Policy Architectures for the Post-Kyoto World
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change determined that 'most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.'
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Developing Global Competencies - An Interview with Fernando Reimers
Fernando Reimers is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Education and the director of global education and of international education policy at Harvard University. Reimers talks about the importance of developing global competencies, the nation's growing Latino dropout rate, and the often overlooked talents and opportunities that Latino children bring to classrooms across the US.
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HSPH dean evaluates H1N1 response, lessons learned
Health officials learned enough during the spring’s first wave of swine flu to be confident about managing this fall’s expected second wave, despite a “sense of uneasiness” that hangs over the coming flu season, Harvard School of Public Health Dean Julio Frenk said Wednesday (Sept. 16). Though the global response to the sudden appearance and rapid spread of swine flu, caused by the H1N1 virus, was not perfect, Frenk gave it generally high marks.
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Undergraduates are traveling more these days because, well, they are traveling more.
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International Education Program fetes 10th anniversary
Created by Fernando Reimers in 1999 to expand the School’s international education efforts, the curriculum for the one-year master’s degree involves regular course work, self-directed study, and a seminar every other week led by top international education professionals.
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Princess Zahra outlines the work of Aga Khan Development Network
At a time when the world is grappling with issues of child-centered education, of women’s rights in Muslim societies, and of the loss of authentic local cultures under a wave of globalization, the princess spoke to all of these.
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Rockefeller grants open up world for undergrads
Nearly 500 Harvard undergraduates will learn about other cultures by participating in high-quality international experiences this summer, thanks to the generosity of David Rockefeller, longtime University benefactor and member of the Harvard College Class of 1936.
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Study abroad students have lots to say, in lots of languages
Every fall, Harvard Yard comes alive with conversation as students greet old friends and recount how they spent the summer break. This year, with nearly 300 students participating in study abroad programs run by the Harvard Summer School, these encounters likely featured more foreign phrases and more exotic locales than in days past.
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There's a world of difference between studying public health and working in the field. If you're going to stop sexual genocide, stem the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa, or design malaria treatment programs, you have to go where the people are and see the world through their eyes.
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Works and Woods: Architecture and ecology in Japan
When you enter the Japanese house in the Boston Children's Museum, says Yukio Lippit '92, "you feel a little bit Alice in Wonderland-ish." Stepping into this nineteenth-century Kyoto merchant's house does feel like going down the rabbit hole.
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