Health
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What your brain score says about your body
Simple tool can be used to identify risk factors for cancer and heart disease too, says new study
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Son’s diabetes diagnosis sent scientist on quest for cure
Decades later, Doug Melton and team are testing treatment that could make insulin shots obsolete
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Wildfire smoke can harm heart and lungs even after the fire has ended
First study to fully assess its impact on all major types of cardiovascular, respiratory diseases
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Young researcher’s ALS attack plan is now a no-go
Career award among casualties of ‘terrifying’ cuts affecting lab of David Sinclair
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Miracle drugs don’t come out of nowhere
Healthcare, innovation experts say funding cuts to university labs will slow or stop basic research on which breakthroughs are built
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Vitamin D supplements may slow biological aging
Trial shows protection against telomere shortening, which heightens disease risk
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Treatment resistance in some cancer cells may be reversible
The ability of cancer cells to resist treatment with either targeted drug therapies or traditional chemotherapy may, in some cases, result from a transient state of reversible drug “tolerance.” In…
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A ‘mind-blowing’ day
Vermont high school students explore the human brain, with help from Harvard scholars.
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Understanding the deadly deathcap
Biology Professor Anne Pringle is taking the study of one of the world’s most poisonous mushrooms out of the realm of adventure stories and into the world of ecology, in an attempt to better understand how it spreads.
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Did rapid brain evolution make humans susceptible to Alzheimers?
Of the millions of animals on Earth, including the relative handful that are considered the most intelligent — including apes, whales, crows, and owls — only humans experience the severe…
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Alzheimer’s for humans only
Disorders that result in severe neurological decline, such as Alzheimer’s disease, are not found in other animals, meaning that humans acquired their predisposition to the disease during recent evolution.
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Post Traumatic Stress Disorder knows no international boundaries
The diagnosis and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder has come a long way since the 1970s, with research now showing it is both more common and more treatable than once…
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Internet offers risks as well as benefit to patients
The Internet has had a profound effect on clinical practice by providing both physicians and patients with a wealth of information. But with those rewards come risks of incorrect or…
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Post-traumatic stress
Terry Keane, a longtime PTSD researcher and associate chief of staff for research and development at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, says researchers in recent years have learned much about post-traumatic stress, including that it is both more prevalent and more treatable than previously supposed.
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‘I thought a bomb went off’
As twilight fell over Port-au-Prince that first terrible night after Haiti’s January earthquake, Louise Ivers watched a strange cloud of dust settle over the city. Stirred by buildings collapsing as the late afternoon quake struck, the cloud was pierced only by sound, a rising chorus of screams from across the capital as the toll became apparent.
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60 minutes of exercise per day needed for middle-aged women to maintain weight
If a middle-aged or older woman with a normal body mass index wants to maintain her weight over an extended period, she must engage in the equivalent of 60 minutes…
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Replacing those saturated fats
In a new study, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health find that replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated ones is likely to help reduce the risk of heart disease.
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Polyunstaturated fats may cut risk of heart disease
Although for nearly 60 years people have been urged to decrease their consumption of saturated fats to prevent heart disease, there has been surprisingly little scientific evidence that doing so actually decreases the risk of coronary heart disease events
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“Good” cells can go “bad” in a “bad neighborhood”
Normal.dotm 0 0 1 375 2142 Harvard University 17 4 2630 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false The general theory of cancer development holds…
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Playing on our instincts
Assistant clinical professor of psychology Deirdre Barrett says that many of today’s ills come from intentional overstimulation of natural human impulses, giving people hard-to-resist appetites for everything from fighting to sex to unhealthy foods.
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Epstein-Barr Virus implicated as a cause of MS
Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, and a team of collaborators have observed for the first time that the risk of multiple…
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War-related stress associated with increased risk of asthma
The trauma experienced during war may increase the risk of developing asthma, according to the results of a new study by Harvard researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Harvard…
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Right this way! See it! Taste it!
Former FDA commissioner David Kessler says overeating has to be attacked the same way that tobacco was in the past, by making it socially unacceptable.
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Alzheimer’s-associated protein may be part of the innate immune system
Amyloid-beta protein – the primary constituent of the plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients – may be part of the body’s first-line system to defend against infection.…
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It’s all in the cortex
Research suggests that the brain’s lateral prefrontal cortex plays an important role in showing how well someone can rebound emotionally the day after an argument.
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Infant mortality down, ailments persist
José Cordero, dean of the University of Puerto Rico’s School of Public Health, said that the progress made in the 20th century on infant mortality has revealed new health concerns stemming from that success: how to reduce birth defects and provide care for the greater number of children who are surviving them.
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Deep thinking
The Museum of Comparative Zoology’s invertebrate collection continues to expand, as biology professor Gonzalo Giribet brings home samples from the deep ocean in the North Atlantic.
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Reflections on a catastrophe
Assistant Professor of Medicine Louise Ivers shares her story of being caught in the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
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Weighing the risk factors
Risk factors for childhood obesity may be evident before birth and are more likely to occur in African-American and Hispanic children than in Caucasian children. Researchers studied 1,826 mother-child pairs from pregnancy through the child’s first five years of life.
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Efforts to prevent childhood obesity must begin early
Normal 0 0 1 751 4281 35 8 5257 11.1282 0 0 0 Efforts to prevent childhood obesity should begin far earlier than currently thought — perhaps even before birth…
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Hey squash, time for your close-up
Bruce Smith, of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, discusses the rise of agriculture in a talk at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.
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Memories are made of this
In a lecture, neuroscientist Eric Kandel ’52 said that researchers have learned that short-term memory, the ability to recall things for minutes or hours, is fundamentally different from long-term memory, which holds information for weeks, months, even a lifetime.
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Report from Haiti
Nearly a month after a massive earthquake devastated Haiti, paramedic Anthony Croese looked into the crowd outside a destroyed orphanage near Port-au-Prince and spotted an emaciated baby cradled in his father’s arms.
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A molecule that destroys normal metabolism is found
Overeating in mice triggers a molecule once considered to be only involved in detecting and fighting viruses to also destroy normal metabolism, leading to insulin resistance and setting the stage…
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New life for old whale exhibit
Skeletons of whales diving and breaching are enlivening the lobby of Harvard’s new Northwest Laboratory building, bringing the killer whale and bottlenose whale specimens new prominence more than 70 years after they were last exhibited.
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The hunt for healthy answers
JoAnn Manson leads a nationwide study to assess whether vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids can boost immunity and protect against ailments from heart disease to cancer.