Featured series 
Tag: Harvard Medical School
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Health
Checking in, saving lives
Harvard researchers have estimated the likely cost-effectiveness of post-discharge follow-up phone calls to smokers hospitalized with acute heart attacks. In a report in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the researchers suggest that phone calls to these discharged smokers encouraging them to quit would yield significant health and economic gains.
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Health
Expecting better
Harvard researchers in the Children’s Hospital Boston Informatics Program have created a model for predicting a drug’s tendency to cause birth defects.
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Health
Mixed messages
A comparative analysis found wide disparities in the results of four common measures of hospital-wide mortality rates, with competing methods yielding both higher- and lower-than-expected rates for the same Massachusetts hospitals during the same year.
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Health
Placebos work — even without deception
Patients who were knowingly given placebos for irritable bowel syndrome experienced significant symptom relief when compared with controls.
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Health
Seeing double
By comparing the DNA of modern elephants from Africa and Asia to DNA extracted from two extinct species, the woolly mammoth and the mastodon, researchers have concluded that Africa has two — not one — species of elephant. Now that we know the forest and savanna elephants are two very different animals, the forest elephant…
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Science & Tech
Oh, the humanity
Using digitized books as a “cultural genome,” a team of researchers from Harvard, Google, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the American Heritage Dictionary, unveil a quantitative approach to centuries of trends.
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Campus & Community
Paul Farmer appointed University Professor
Harvard names humanitarian leader Paul Farmer a University Professor, awarding him its highest faculty honor.
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Arts & Culture
Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care
Augustus A. White III, a pioneering black surgeon and the Ellen and Melvin Gordon Distinguished Professor of Medical Education, and contributor David Chanoff use extensive research and interviews with leading physicians to show how subconscious stereotyping influences doctor-patient interactions, diagnosis, and treatment.
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Science & Tech
Nearer, better
Through analyzing the locations of authors of academic papers, researchers have determined that physical proximity of collaborators, especially between the first and last author, correlates with how widely the paper is cited.
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Campus & Community
Hyman to step down as provost
Provost Steven E. Hyman, who spurred an expansion of interdisciplinary research at Harvard and has overseen the revitalization of the University’s libraries and many of its museums and cultural institutions, plans to leave his post after nearly a decade.
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Campus & Community
10 named to new Harvard Library Board
President Drew Faust has announced the names of the first 10 members of the new Harvard Library Board, which will oversee the transition of the University’s vast library system to a coordinated structure.
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Health
Cholera strain tied to South Asia
A team of researchers has determined that the strain of cholera erupting in Haiti matches bacterial samples from South Asia and not those from Latin America.
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Science & Tech
Caring for caring
The art and technology of care giving — undervalued now — “cuts to the quick” of our humanity. Caring — for others, for ourselves, even for things and places — is at the core of our humanity. But how to cope with its demands in a medical setting was the subject of a two-panel conference,…
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Health
Life support for medical faculty
Shore Fellowships provide important breathing room for junior faculty members pressed by the demands of work and home life.
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Health
Major step in autism testing
Researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital and the University of Utah have developed the best biologically based test for autism to date. The test was able to detect the disorder in individuals with high-functioning autism with 94 percent accuracy.
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Science & Tech
New facilities for Wyss Institute
Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering officially opens new, expansive facilities in Boston and Cambridge to host its fast-growing enterprise.
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Health
Partial reversal of aging achieved in mice
Harvard scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute say they have for the first time partially reversed age-related degeneration in mice, resulting in new growth of the brain and testes, improved fertility, and the return of a lost cognitive function.
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Health
Critical finding for skin cancer treatment
Researchers’ findings pinpoint a critical gene involved in melanoma growth, and provide a framework for discovering ways to tackle cancer drug resistance.
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Campus & Community
Peering into their futures
Three Harvard College seniors and a first-year Harvard Medical School student are among the 32 American men and women named as 2011 Rhodes Scholars.
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Health
Helping Chinese with depression
A treatment model designed to accommodate the beliefs and concerns of Chinese immigrants appears to significantly improve the recognition and treatment of major depression in this typically underserved group.
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Health
Rare find
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Dental Medicine have found that by mimicking a rare genetic disorder in a dish they can rewind the internal clock of a mature cell and drive it back into an adult stem-cell stage.
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Campus & Community
A program of exploration
Freshman seminars connect students with new subjects and star faculty.
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Health
Probing the golden years
In an aging society, Harvard researchers are plumbing the depths of what it means to have a larger proportion of the population elderly — and figuring out how to keep them healthy.
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Campus & Community
Medical School’s Jocelyn Spragg, 70
Jocelyn Spragg, faculty director of diversity programs and special academic resources in the division of medical sciences at Harvard Medical School (HMS), as well as a research scientist, educator, mentor, and tireless promoter of educational opportunities for underrepresented students, died Nov. 2.
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Campus & Community
Brain-damage risks higher for younger marijuana users, study says
People who start smoking marijuana before they turn 16 may damage their brains more than people who start later, according to a small study from McLean Hospital…
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Health
Partnerships, training key to global health
Partnerships, training of local medical personnel, and practice in delivering services are all key if the effort to improve global health is to be successful, say speakers at the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Global Health’s inaugural symposium.
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Campus & Community
46 faculty enter retirement program
Forty-six faculty members have elected to take advantage of Harvard’s faculty retirement program, with longer phased retirement options the most popular choice.
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Health
Early marijuana use a bigger problem
Researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital have shown that those who start using marijuana at a young age are more impaired on tests of cognitive function than those who start smoking at a later age.
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Health
Promising therapy for stroke patients
A noninvasive electric stimulation technique administered to both sides of the brain can help stroke patients who have lost motor skills in their hands and arms, according to a new study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
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Health
Tracking nanoparticles
Using a real-time imaging system, scientists have tracked a group of near-infrared fluorescent nanoparticles from the airspaces of the lungs into the body and out again, providing a description of the characteristics and behavior of the particles that could be used in developing therapeutic agents to treat pulmonary disease.
