Tag: Life Sciences
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Nation & World
BIDMC geneticist Rinn named to Popular Science’s ‘Brilliant 10’
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center geneticist John Rinn, whose research has helped uncover a new class of RNA, has been named to this year’s “Brilliant 10” list of top young scientists by Popular Science magazine.
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Nation & World
Phys Ed: Is Running Barefoot Better for You?
Daniel Lieberman, PhD, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, studies and periodically practices barefoot running. His academic work focuses in part on how early man survived by evolving the ability to lope for long distances after prey, well before the advent of Nike shoes. There “is good evidence that humans have been…
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Nation & World
Harvard team grows heart muscle
Harvard researchers have created a strip of pulsing heart muscle from mouse embryonic stem cells, a step toward the eventual goal of growing replacement parts for hearts damaged by cardiovascular disease.
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Nation & World
From stem cells to heart muscle
A team of Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and collaborators at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has taken a giant step toward possibly using human stem cells to repair damaged hearts.
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Nation & World
Foster elected to Trustees of Reservations board of directors
Harvard Forest’s David Foster elected to the Trustees of Reservations board of directors at the organization’s annual meeting and dinner on Sept. 26.
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Nation & World
Scientists get closer to making safe patient-specific stem cells
But many scientists think the safest approach is to replace the genes altogether with so-called small molecules. In a study published online today in the journal Cell Stem Cell, researchers from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute report that a single compound they dubbed RepSox can replace two of the four key reprogramming genes.
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Nation & World
Earth’s ‘Boring Billion’ Years Blamed on Sulfur-Loving Microbes
“If we really want to understand what’s happed in the history of Earth, we really have to understand this cross talk between the physical and biological processes,” says study coauthor Andrew Knoll of Harvard University.
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Nation & World
Liem, professor of ichthyology, dies at 74
Karel Frederik Liem, an expert on the functional anatomy, evolution, and physiology of fishes and curator of ichthyology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, died on Sept. 3 at the age of 74.
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Nation & World
Ernest Edward Williams
At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on May 19, 2009, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Ernest Edward Williams, Professor of Biology, Emeritus, and Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Ernest Williams’ work on anole evolution synthesized a wide variety of fields.
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Nation & World
FAS names six full professors with tenure
From a professor of comparative literature to a professor of Chinese history, the FAS has announced six new tenured professors.
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Nation & World
Concentrating on stem cells
New concentration is the latest example of the University’s commitment to and pre-eminence in the promising field of stem cell research.
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Nation & World
E.O. Wilson And Will Wright: Ant Lovers Unite!
Ants make some people cringe — but for E. O. Wilson and Will Wright, they provide never-ending fascination.
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Nation & World
‘Water guy’ John Briscoe stays in motion
For someone who deep-sixed his BlackBerry (instant e-mail was taking over his life) and traded the local newspaper for a good book (“What do I need to know about Celtics’ scores?”), John Briscoe ’76 is as worldly a person as you are ever likely to meet.
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Nation & World
Trading energy for safety, bees extend legs to stay stable in wind
New research shows some bees brace themselves against wind and turbulence by extending their sturdy hind legs while flying. But this approach comes at a steep cost, increasing aerodynamic drag and the power required for flight by roughly 30 percent, and cutting into the bees’ flight performance.
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Nation & World
Dean Tosteson dies at age 84
Daniel C. Tosteson, the Caroline Shields Walker Distinguished Professor of Cell Biology, who served an extraordinary two decades as dean of Harvard Medical School, from 1977 to 1997, died peacefully on May 27 after a long illness. He was 84 years old.
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Nation & World
Take two: Brother’s keepers Bill and Dan Jones ’09, ’09
Complete strangers recognize Dan Jones on campus all the time. It’s the same for his brother, Bill. “I just play along,” said Dan. “I don’t know their names, I’ve never seen them before. I just assume Bill knows them and I try to be friendly so they don’t start hating him.”
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Nation & World
Biology department evolves at FAS
Earlier this month, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) made official what scientists worldwide have known for years: Harvard is a hotbed of research and teaching in the field of human evolutionary biology — the study of why we’re the way we are.
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Nation & World
Embryo’s heartbeat drives blood stem cell formation
Biologists have long wondered why the embryonic heart begins beating so early, before the tissues actually need to be infused with blood. Two groups of Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston (Children’s) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) — presenting multiple lines of evidence from zebrafish, mice, and mouse embryonic stem…
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Nation & World
Vocal mimicking, sense of rhythm tied
Researchers at Harvard University have found that humans aren’t the only ones who can groove to a beat — some other species can dance, too. The capability was previously believed to be specific to humans. The research team found that only species that can mimic sound seem to be able to keep a beat, implying…
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Nation & World
Microbes thrive 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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Nation & World
Geometry plays part in cellular protein arrangement
Harvard researchers examining the activity of a common type of soil bacteria have taken another step in understanding the inner workings of cells, showing that proteins can arrange themselves according to a cell’s inner geometry.
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Nation & World
HMS’s Harlow receives award from melanoma foundation
The Melanoma Research Foundation (MRF) awarded its Established Investigator Grant to Edward E. Harlow, the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Research and Teaching at Harvard Medical School (HMS), on Feb. 24.
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Nation & World
Florida: The far side of paradise
It was near midnight. Gnarly oak trees and sandy pines draped with Spanish moss encroached upon the narrow road. Warm air sweetened by the scent of orange blossoms wafted through the windows as the van lurched to a stop. The headlights illuminated a metal sign pinned to a gate that read “Archbold Research Station.” We…
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Nation & World
Planning to save a changing world
Climate change is not only altering Alaska’s natural world, it’s also affecting how humans interact with it, particularly those whose culture and traditions have pointed the way for generations to survive in the sometimes inhospitable far north. Terry Chapin, a professor of ecology at the University of Alaska’s Institute of Arctic Biology, said that climate…
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Nation & World
Skin biology illuminates how stem cells operate
As a girl, Elaine Fuchs borrowed her mother’s old strainers and mixing bowls to collect polliwogs, an activity she credits for her present-day career as a biologist.
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Nation & World
Five named Early Career Scientists
Five Harvard researchers are among 50 young scientists nationwide who will have their work supported for the next six years by a new initiative from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).
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Nation & World
How stem cells find their way around
Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers have for the first time identified in mice a cellular mechanism that directs stem cells to their ultimate destination in the body.
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Nation & World
Losick among Canada Gairdner International Award recipients
Richard Losick, the Maria Moors Cabot Professor of Biology, was recently named one of seven Canada Gairdner International Award winners by the Gairdner Foundation, and will receive a CA$100,000 as one of the world’s leading medical research scientists. The Gairdner award is among the most prestigious awards in biomedical science.
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Nation & World
Carroll Emory Wood Jr. passes away at the age of 88
Carroll Emory Wood Jr., a professor of biology and curator of the Arnold Arboretum, passed away at his South End (Boston) home on March 15 at the age of 88.
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Nation & World
Study IDs human genes required for hepatitis C viral replicating
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers are investigating a new way to block reproduction of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) — targeting not the virus itself but the human genes the virus exploits in its life cycle. In the March 19 Cell Host & Microbe, they report finding nearly 100 genes that support the replication of…