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HarvardScience
By: Mureji Fatunde ’12/
January 24, 2012
Color-coded food labeling and adjusting the way food items are positioned in display cases encouraged healthy choices in a large hospital cafeteria in a study by MGH researchers.
Early-stage venture fund launches
Today, the Experiment Fund, a new seed-stage investment fund, opens its doors with backing from storied venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Designed specifically to support student start-ups and nurture novel technologies and platforms created in Cambridge (or by innovators educated in Cambridge), the Experiment Fund will eventually include additional strategic angel investors and advisers.
Broad Institute awarded $32.5M grant
The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT today announced that it has received a $32.5 million grant from the Boston-based Klarman Family Foundation to support a new collaborative effort focused on deciphering how human cells are wired.
PFCs may hinder vaccine response
Perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), widely used in manufactured products such as non-stick cookware, waterproof clothing, and fast-food packaging, were associated with lowered immune response to vaccinations in children in research led by Philippe Grandjean of the Harvard School of Public Health.
HarvardScience Articles
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With a little help from our ancient friends
The social networks of the Hadza, a group of hunter-gatherers in Tanzania, show evidence that many elements of social network structure may have been present at an early point in human history.
Dozens of Harvard undergraduates started the year with a new emphasis on wellness, thanks to the Optimal Health program. With presentations from a lifestyle medicine consultant, a nutritionist, a personal trainer, a sleep specialist, and a stress manager, Optimal Health emphasized prevention and fitness.
The rapid rise in discoveries of planets circling other stars is changing astronomers’ views of the galaxy and the Earth’s place in it, giving impetus to the search for extraterrestrial life, astronomer and Radcliffe Fellow Ray Jayawardhana says.
Using friendship data collected from Facebook, Harvard sociologists have found that people who share similar interests in music and movies are more likely to befriend one another, but that very few interests are likely to spread among friends.
Harvard scientists have developed the fullest picture yet of how neurons in the brain interact to reinforce behaviors that range from learning to drug use, a finding that could open the door to new treatments for addiction.
Developed by Harvard’s Center for Geographic Analysis, WorldMap allows scholars to create, share, and publish maps and other geospatial data.
Tumor cells can prevent tumor spread
A new study from Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center finds that a group of little-explored cells in the tumor microenvironment likely serves as an important gatekeeper against cancer progression and metastasis.
Nutrition experts at HSPH and chefs and dietitians at the Culinary Institute of America have developed five muffin recipes that incorporate healthy fats and whole grains, and use a lighter hand on the salt and sugar.
Researchers develop ‘smart’ nanotherapeutics
Research collaboration between the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Children’s Hospital Boston has developed “smart” injectable nanotherapeutics that can be programmed to selectively deliver drugs to the cells of the pancreas.
Harvard researchers have found that those participating in marathons and half-marathons are not at an increased risk of cardiac arrest.
Reaping benefits of exercise minus the sweat
A team led by researchers at Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has isolated a natural hormone from muscle cells that triggers some of the key health benefits of exercise.
In a paper published in the journal Nature, Harvard Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Peter Huybers confirms that changes in the orientation of the Earth’s spin axis have contributed to periods of major deglaciation in the past million years.
Harvard researchers have found that a tiny motor inside of us called dynein, one tasked with shuttling vital payloads throughout the cell’s intricate highway infrastructure, staggers, which is quite contrary to the regular, efficient poise of its fellow motors.
Nicotine replacement therapies did not improve smokers’ chances of long-term cessation in a study by researchers at Harvard and UMass.
Age-related effects of MS may prove reversible
In a new study, Harvard stem cell researchers and scientists at the University of Cambridge have found that the age-related degeneration in conditions such as multiple sclerosis (MS) may be reversible.
Reading life’s building blocks
A team led by Harvard researcher Charles Lieber has for the first time succeeded in creating a device that opens the door to using tiny holes called nanopores in an electrically charged membrane to quickly and easily sequence DNA.
John Huth, the creator of the popular “Primitive Navigation” course, spent most of last summer investigating a mysterious phenomenon called “underwater lightning,” which some say can be used as a navigational tool.
Harvard astronomers, working as part of NASA’s Kepler mission, have detected the first Earth-sized planets orbiting a distant star, a milestone in the hunt for alien worlds that brings scientists one step closer to their ultimate goal of finding a twin Earth.
Use, abuse of Internet pharmacies
Efforts to halt the growing abuse of prescription drugs must include addressing the availability of these drugs on the Internet and increasing physician awareness of the dangers posed by Internet pharmacies.
Health reform in the crosshairs
With health care costs set to gobble up more of the federal budget, analysts say that additional reforms are inevitable, though national indecision over what they should look like could mean a rocky path ahead.
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