David LowFrom reviewing hundreds of published research studies and years of treating children with autism and ADHD, Dr. Debby Hamilton '87 has developed a comprehensive prevention plan to help women control risk factors before, during and after pregnancy, which she shares in her new book, Preventing Autism and ADHD (Hedwin Press). This guide helps women reduce their risk factors in the areas of nutrition, digestion, immune function, inflammation, hormones, and detoxification. Hamilton stresses that women have the best chance of having a strong, healthy child by improving their health starting before pregnancy. The Boulder Daily Camera recently interviewed Hamilton and comments…
In Designing Together: The Collaboration and Conflict Management Handbook for Creative Professionals (New Riders), Dan Brown ’94 offers practicing designers a guide to working with other people. The increasing complexity of design projects, the greater reliance on remote team members, and the evolution of design techniques demands professionals who can cooperate effectively. This book encourages cultivating collaborative behaviors and dealing with the inevitable difficult conversations. Brown covers 28 collaboration techniques, 46 conflict management techniques, 31 difficult situation diagnoses, and 17 designer personality traits. The volume should prove helpful for designers on large or small teams and those working in remote…
Cynthia RockwellNew York based sculptor Meredith Gang Bergmann ’76, creator of the lifesized statues of historical Bostonians, will attend the 10th anniversary celebration of the unveiling of her “largest sculpture project to date,” the Boston Women’s Memorial. The celebration will be held on Oct. 27 on Commonwealth Avenue Mall in Boston. The subjects were chosen for their progressive ideas, commitment to social change, and writings that had significant historic impact. Bergmann’s statues, also, break with convention: Instead of standing above the street on a pedestal, Bergmann places Abigail Adams, Lucy Stone, and Phillis Wheatley level with pedestrians, using their pedestal as…
Scott R. Lowden ’62 has just published Import Transactions and Customs Compliance (FTA Publications, LLC), a comprehensive, 472-page guide to U.S. customs law and import practices for importers and trade practitioners. The book is the result of the writer’s 10 years’ experience practicing import and export law with Braumiller Schulz and nearly two years devoted heavily to writing the book. Importers must deal with foreign suppliers, freight forwarders, brokers, carriers, banks and other service providers just to make a purchase. They also have to make these purchases in a way that satisfies an astonishing array of regulations enforced by U.S.…
Olivia DrakeBradley Whitford ’81 (The West Wing) stars as Pete Harrison, a high-powered environmental lawyer with three kids and two ex-wives in the new ABC comedy Trophy Wife, which premiered in September on ABC. On the Tuesday night show, Pete marries Kate, a younger woman, played by Malin Akerman, who previously led a rowdy, carefree life and whose life is shaken up with the new responsibilities of family life. In his review of the program in The Hollywood Reporter, Tim Goodman wrote: “Whitford shines with his surprisingly Zen-like approach to having three women he's been married to weave in and out of…
Ron Medley ’73 is a featured speaker in the hour-and-a-half commentary on the DVD of How to Survive a Plague, (Sundance Selects), a highly acclaimed documentary directed by David France that was nominated for an Academy Award. (Medley also appears briefly in the movie.) The film tells the story of the brave men and women in two coalitions—ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group)—whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition. Despite having no scientific training, these improbable, self-made activists infiltrated the pharmaceutical industry and helped identify promising new drugs, moving them from experimental…
Dr. Jeffrey Burns ’80, chief of critical care at Boston Children’s Hospital and associate professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, is program director of OPENPediatrics, the newly created and first cloud-based global education technology platform designed to improve the exchange of medical knowledge on critically ill children around the world. OPENPediatrics was created by IBM and Boston Children's Hospital. “Nothing breaks down walls and brings people together like caring for a critically ill child," said Burns in an IBM press release, noting that with the corporation’s “technology and services arsenal” and the hospital’s expertise in pediatric critical care, the…
Natalie Robichaud ’14Karen Ocorr Ph.D. ’83 is sending fruit flies into space to study their heart development and function outside of Earth’s gravity. An assistant research professor in the Development and Aging Program at the Sanford-Burham Medical Research Institute, Ocorr is collaborating with fellow researchers at NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University to study the effects of space travel and microgravity on the heart function of fruit flies. “We believe that our studies with fruit flies can provide us with important information that will impact astronauts’ heart health when they spend extended periods in microgravity including current missions aboard the ISS…
In her academic study Poetry of Attention in the Eighteenth Century (Palgrave Macmillan), Margaret Koehler ’95 identifies a pervasive cultivation of attention in 18th-century poetry. The book argues that a plea from a 1692 ode by William Congreve—'Let me be all, but my attention, dead'—embodies a wider aspiration in the period’s poetry to explore overt themes of attention and demonstrate techniques of readerly attention. It historicizes 18th century accounts of attention and pioneers a link between the period's poetry and recent discussions of attention in cognitive psychology. Koehler’s book contributes to the largely neglected history of a psychological trait that…
Jenifer McKim ’88 joined The New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NECIR) as the assistant managing editor and senior investigative reporter. With close to 25 years of experience as a news journalist, most recently for The Boston Globe, McKim has won many awards for her work, including the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism in 2011 for a story about the domestic sex trafficking of minors and the California AP Investigative Journalism Award in 2008. In 2005, she led a group of reporters to write about the importation of lead-tainted Mexican candles, a project that was nominated as a finalist for…
Not So Fast: Parenting Your Teen Through the Dangers of Driving (Chicago Review Press) by Tim Hollister ’78 is an informative and empowering guide to help parents understand the causes of teen crashes and head them off each time before their teens get behind the wheel. Most of the information available to parents of teen drivers acknowledges that driving is risky, and then advises parents that their obligation is to teach their teens how to operate a vehicle. However, missing from most resources are explanations of why teen driving is so dangerous and specific, proactive steps that parents can take…