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Campus & Community
Four Harvard Medical School researchers part of $300 million NIH center for HIV research consortium
Four Harvard Medical School (HMS) faculty will serve in leadership roles within the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI), a consortium of universities and academic medical centers established today (July 14) by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAD). The center’s goal will be to solve major problems in HIV vaccine development and…
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Campus & Community
In brief
HMNH seeks ‘gallery guides’ The Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH) seeks volunteers who wish to share their enthusiasm for natural history with museum visitors of all ages. The museum seeks “gallery guides” who are able to commit one morning or afternoon per weekend. For information, call Dominique Rampton at (617) 384-7180 or e-mail drampton@oeb.harvard.edu.
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Campus & Community
Newsmakers
Postdoc named Runyon Fellow The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation named Yifeng Zhang, postdoctoral fellow in molecular and cellular biology, one of its 10 postdoctoral fellowship recipients at its May scientific advisory committee review. According to the foundation, these fellowships are awarded to “outstanding young scientists conducting theoretical and experimental research that is relevant to…
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Campus & Community
Women’s Health Study: Long-awaited findings of low-dose aspirin and vitamin E in preventing disease
The Women’s Health Study (WHS) – the largest randomized clinical trial to investigate the impact of aspirin and vitamin E on the primary prevention of cardiovascular and cancer risk – has helped shape some of clinical medicine’s basic understanding of disease prevention and women’s health. Now, researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), where the…
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Campus & Community
Sports in brief
Corriero nominated for ESPY Harvard’s Nicole Corriero ’05, the ECAC Hockey League and Ivy League Player of the Year, was recently nominated for an ESPY Award by ESPN in the category of Best Female College Athlete. Corriero joined Louisiana State University basketball star Simone Augustus; University of California, Los Angeles, gymnast Kristen Maloney; Notre Dame…
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Campus & Community
Good luck charm?
President Lawrence H. Summers throws out the first pitch at Fenway Park on July 15 the Red Sox went on to defeat the New York Yankees that evening, 17-1. (Staff photo Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office)
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Campus & Community
Martin appointed FAS diversity adviser
Dean of Harvards Faculty of Arts and Sciences William C. Kirby announced on July 13 that Lisa Martin, Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs in the Department of Government, has been appointed senior adviser to the dean, with responsibility for advising him, the divisional deans, and the Faculty as a whole on matters related to…
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Campus & Community
Pulitzer Prize winner, noted economists named KSG professors
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power and economists Jeffrey Liebman and Alberto Abadie have been named professors at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG).
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Campus & Community
James J. Healy, Harvard Business School professor and prominent labor arbitrator, dead at 88
James J. Healy, the John G. McLean Professor of Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard Business School (HBS), died at his home in Phoenix, Ariz., on June 6 at the age of 88. A member of the Harvard University and HBS faculties for more than four decades, he was a leading authority on labor relations as…
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Campus & Community
A bevy of unknown beauties
Walking up the ramp of the Carpenter Center, Julie Buck smiles as she sees a poster of a pretty, dark-haired woman in a white, one-piece bathing suit lying on a red leather recliner with a color test strip balanced on her bare thigh.
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Campus & Community
HUAM acquires prominent Fluxus collection
The Harvard University Art Museums (HUAM) earlier this month announced its acquisition of the Barbara and Peter Moore Fluxus Collection, one of the most important groups of Fluxus materials in North America. The acquisition is a partial gift from Barbara Moore, and a partial purchase made through the museums Margaret Fisher Fund.
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Campus & Community
Marilyn Dunn named Schlesinger Library executive director and Radcliffe Institute librarian
The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study has announced the appointment of Marilyn Dunn as the new executive director of the library and Radcliffe Institute librarian. She will assume her duties on July 18. Currently the college librarian and director of information…
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Campus & Community
Spiritual renewal
The Memorial Church undergoes top-to-bottom renovations this summer, including new slates for the 73-year-old roof, insulation for the attic, and state-of-the-art heating, cooling, and ventilation systems. The church will reopen for Freshman Sunday, Sept. 11. (Staff photo Jon Chase/Harvard News Office)
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Campus & Community
Harvard authors receive CASE research award
Professor of Higher Education Richard Chait and William Ryan, research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University, have been named recipients of the Council for Advancement and Support of Educations (CASE) 2005 Research Writing Awards. These awards recognize outstanding research and writing in the educational advancement disciplines of alumni relations, communications,…
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Campus & Community
CAPS announces fellowship winners
Harvards Center for American Political Studies (CAPS) has announced the winners of its graduate and undergraduate student fellowships. These fellowships help to foster innovative research on American politics, spanning from the Civil War to the present. Deadlines for the fellowships are in early spring.
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Campus & Community
New route to cell death found
Damaged or unusable cells in our bodies will commit suicide to protect us from harm. That’s a well-known process with the awkward name of “apoptosis.” There’s also necrosis, meaning “to make dead,” when brain, heart, and other cells die from disease and trauma. These suicides and uncontrolled deaths have always been thought of as separate…
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Campus & Community
Risk of sudden cardiac death is highest in the early period following a heart attack
Even with modern medical treatment, patients who have experienced a heart attack remain at increased risk for sudden death after they are discharged from the hospital. In an effort to better understand who to treat and when, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), in collaboration with an international research team, studied sudden death in…
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Campus & Community
Study: Predatory dinosaurs had birdlike pulmonary system
What could the fierce dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex and a modern songbird such as the sparrow possibly have in common? Their pulmonary systems may have been more similar than scientists previously thought, according to new research from Harvard University and Ohio University. Though some scientists have proposed that predatory dinosaurs had lungs similar to crocodiles and…
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Health
Home from the hospital: almost half of patients are discharged with test results still pending
According to Christopher Roy, M.D., a hospitalist at BWH who studies patient safety, “We found that while approximately half of the patients in this study had test results that were unavailable at discharge, only a very small percentage of pending results impacted the patient’s care plan.” The researchers followed 2,644 consecutive, discharged patients from two…
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Health
Molecular middleman puts thyroid hormone in developmental signaling pathway
Tissues such as muscle and brain convert the inactive form of thyroid hormone, T4, into T3, the active form of thyroid hormone, when necessary. In the 1980s, researchers discovered that this conversion is accomplished by the deiodinase enzymes. Several years ago, Antonio Bianco, Harvard Medical School associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital,…
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Health
Bacterium proves essential to immune system development
In the July 15, 2005 Cell, a team led by Dennis Kasper, the William Ellery Channing Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and Sarkis Mazmanian, HMS instructor in microbiology and molecular genetics, both at the Channing laboratory, reports that Bacteriodes fragilis…
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Health
Study shows new compound may reduce risk of vision loss in patients with diabetes
The PKC-Diabetic Retinopathy Study (DRS) was designed to evaluate the safety and effect of an oral treatment, RBX, on retinopathy progression or visual loss in patients with moderately severe to very severe nonproliferative diabetic retinopathy. In the study, patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes received either RBX or a placebo over three to…
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Health
Subtle changes in normal genes implicated in breast cancer
Scientists found that benign cells surrounding breast cancers undergo epigenetic modifications. The altered gene function causes the microenvironment cells to signal proliferation and increased aggression in the breast tumor cells. Kornelia Polyak, M.D., Ph.D., is senior author of the paper, which was posted as an advance online publication on the Nature Genetics Web site. Min…
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Health
Blood vessel drugs halt cancer growth
After decades of surviving peer rejection of his theory of cancer treatment by blocking tiny blood vessels, Judah Folkman has gone on to develop drugs that did what he predicted they would do. Folkman’s endostatin, the drug Fortune magazine called a failure, was used to treat 486 patients with lung cancer in China. At Dana-Farber…
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Health
Size of brain structure could signal vulnerability to anxiety disorders
Individuals respond with physical and emotional distress to situations that recall traumatic memories. Such responses usually diminish gradually, as those situations are repeated without unpleasant occurrences; this is called “extinction memory.” But some people continue to respond fearfully and develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Studies in animals have suggested that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)…
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Health
Scientists identify normal gene driving the growth and survival of melanoma cells
Dana-Farber’s Levi Garraway, M.D., Ph.D., and William Sellers, M.D., the paper’s first and senior authors, and their colleagues reported their findings in the July 7, 2005 issue of the journal Nature. The researchers used single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array technology, which focuses on the building blocks of individual genes, to identify regions of chromosomes where…
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Health
Women’s health study: Long-awaited findings of low-dose aspirin and vitamin E in preventing disease
The WHS trial was led by BWH researchers Nancy Cook, Sc.D., and Julie Buring, Sc.D. Its results are published in the July 6, 2005 Journal of the American Medical Association. It monitored 39,876 healthy females 45 years of age and older for cancer and cardiovascular events including heart attack, stroke, and death from cardiovascular causes.…
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Health
Child early intervention programs make for healthier adults
The Brookline Early Education Program (BEEP), a community- based child health and development program, was initiated by the Brookline Public Schools and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and ran from 1972-1979. Enrollment was open to families in Brookline, Mass., and to some urban families in neighboring Boston. The program provided health, educational, and social services…
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Health
Urine test may help monitor disfiguring birthmarks
Vascular anomalies include both vascular malformations and vascular tumors (most commonly hemangiomas). Hemangiomas, found in about 10 percent of infants, occur when the cells lining blood vessels multiply abnormally. Hemangiomas grow rapidly in the first year of life, then usually shrink and disappear. But some grow large, causing obstruction, ulceration, and other problems. Vascular malformations…