With the careers of a generation of young researchers threatened by five years of flat National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, Harvard President Drew Faust and leaders of six other major research institutions were in Washington Tuesday (March 11) calling on Congress to repair the “Broken Pipeline” through which breakthroughs in the biomedical sciences should be flowing.
Jeremy Jackson, renowned marine ecologist of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, has been selected to receive the 11th annual Roger Tory Peterson Medal presented by the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH). Jackson will deliver the Roger Tory Peterson Memorial Lecture on April 6 at 3 p.m. in the Science Center, 1 Oxford St.
Scientists at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have initiated a phase 1 clinical trial to reverse type 1 diabetes. The trial is exploring whether the promising results from the laboratory…
A novel aerosol version of the most common tuberculosis (TB) vaccine, administered directly to the lungs as an oral mist, offers significantly better protection against the disease in experimental animals…
The Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) has announced the establishment of the A.G. Leventis Foundation Fellowship Program with a three-year grant to support Cypriot/Greek and Nigerian students and scholars in public health.
During her schooldays in 1950s Germany, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard rarely did her homework. In 1995, she won the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine. Volhard is now director of the prestigious Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, where, decades before, she had been an undistinguished biochemistry undergraduate. She was at Harvard this week (March 4) to deliver a talk sponsored by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study as part of its Dean’s Lecture Series.
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers — in collaboration with scientists at the University of California, San Diego, and Yale University — have discovered perhaps the strongest evidence yet linking variation in a particular gene with anxiety-related traits. In the March issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, the team describes finding that particular versions of a gene that affects the activity of important neurotransmitter receptors were more common in both children and adults assessed as being inhibited or introverted and also were associated with increased activity of brain regions involved in emotional processing.
J. Craig Venter, the visionary biologist and intellectual entrepreneur who was a leading figure in the decoding of the human genome, will join Harvard University as a visiting scholar at the University’s Origins of Life Initiative.
Why do nearly 1 million people taking cholesterol-lowering statins often experience muscle cramps? Why is it that in the rare case when a diabetic takes medication for intestinal worms, his glucose levels improve? Is there any scientific basis for the purported health effects of green tea?
The first 30,000 pages of a massive online Encyclopedia of Life were unveiled last week at the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference in Monterey, Calif. The project was congratulated by E.O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus, who articulated the need for a dynamic modern portrait of biodiversity in a widely read essay in 2003. “The launch of the Encyclopedia of Life will have a profound and creative effect in science,” Wilson said. “It aims not only to summarize all that we know of Earth’s life forms, but also to accelerate the discovery of the vast array that remain unknown.”
The Foundation for the History of Women in Medicine (FHWIM) is offering two fellowships to support research conducted at the Center for the History of Medicine and its Archives for Women in Medicine, located at Harvard Medical School’s Countway Library.
If a student is struggling, stressed-out, or having trouble coping with pressure, the University is here to listen and help. That’s the theme behind this year’s “Speak Out, Mental Health at Harvard,” a weeklong series of events to engage the student body in active campus dialogues about mental health.
Oleksiy Skrynnyk was just a carefree 9-year-old, his fishing rod slung over his shoulder as he walked home from his favorite pond. He never saw the low-hanging power line. Twenty-two hundred volts shot through his body, entering his right shoulder and exiting out his left foot. The electrocution burns were extensive. His right arm was so badly injured it had to be amputated. Though the level of care in Oleksiy’s homeland was what saved his life, his mother, Olga Zabolotina, knew her son needed more.
John M. Giurini, Chief of the Division of Podiatric Medicine and Surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an Associate Professor in Surgery at Harvard Medical School was installed…
A new study led by researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center has found that women with type 1 diabetes who reported taking less insulin than prescribed had a three-fold increased…
Manipulating levels of nitric oxide, a gas involved in many biological processes, may improve the disorganized network of blood vessels supplying tumors, potentially improving the effectiveness of radiation and chemotherapy. …
Recently (Jan. 6-21), 15 Harvard and 16 Brazilian students participated in an intensive experience: the first Harvard-Brazil Collaborative Course on Infectious Diseases. The course, which was offered by the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Santa Casa de Misericórdia de São Paulo Medical School (FCMSCSP) with the support of the Harvard University Brazil Studies Program at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), included lectures and informal discussions and visits to clinics, hospitals, laboratories, and community programs.
Researchers have identified a key reason why people make mistakes when they try to predict what they will like. When predicting how much they will enjoy a future experience, people tend to compare it to its alternatives — that is, to the experiences they had before, might have later, or could be having in the present moment. But when people actually have the experience, they tend not to think about these alternatives and their experience is relatively unaffected by them.
Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have taken a major step toward eventually being able to reprogram adult cells to an embryonic stem cell-like state without the use of viruses or cancer-causing genes.
Shedding new light on the cognitive rift between humans and animals, a Harvard University scientist has synthesized four key differences in human and animal cognition into a hypothesis on what exactly differentiates human and animal thought.
During the course of the presidential nomination campaigns, some candidates’ health care plans have been described as “socialized medicine.” Historically, that phrase has been used to criticize health reform proposals in the United States.
Despite all the progress and promise of modern medicine, most of the world is still struggling to get the fundamentals of medical care: simple diagnostic tests, affordable medicines, and efficient…
Useful genetic maps showing the inner workings of drug-resistant malaria parasites, and where they live around the world, are being created as part of a major drive against the persistent tropical disease.
How to lose weight and keep it off? Consume fewer calories and burn more calories than you consume, says Rena Wing, director of the Weight Control & Diabetes Research Center at…
Three studies presenting newly identified genetic variants that are associated with increased susceptibility to prostate cancer were published recently (Feb. 10) on the advance online site of Nature Genetics. The 10 gene variants double the number of known variants associated with risk of the disease and are the result of genomewide association studies.
Elevated levels of anxiety may cause women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), the most common form of noninvasive breast cancer, to overestimate their risk of recurrence or dying from breast cancer, suggests a study led by researchers at Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
By looking at infant brain activity, researchers have found that babies as young as 3 months old are sensitive to differences in numerical quantity. Additionally, the scientists were able to see that babies process information about objects and numbers in different, dissociated parts of the brain, which is also the case in older children and in adults.
It was close to midnight one day this week in Durban, South Africa, when Harvard AIDS researcher Bruce D. Walker switched on his computer and made a visit to 104 Mt. Auburn St. in Cambridge.
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