Tag: Life Sciences

  • Campus & Community

    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.

  • Campus & Community

    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…

  • Campus & Community

    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.

  • Health

    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.

  • Campus & Community

    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.

  • Campus & Community

    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.

  • Campus & Community

    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.

  • Campus & Community

    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.

  • Campus & Community

    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.

  • Campus & Community

    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.

  • Health

    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.

  • Campus & Community

    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.

  • Science & Tech

    ‘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.

  • Science & Tech

    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.

  • Campus & Community

    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.

  • Campus & Community

    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.”

  • Health

    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.

  • Science & Tech

    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…

  • Science & Tech

    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…

  • Health

    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.

  • Health

    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.

  • Campus & Community

    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.

  • Science & Tech

    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…

  • Science & Tech

    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…

  • Health

    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.

  • Health

    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).

  • Health

    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.

  • Campus & Community

    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.

  • Campus & Community

    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.

  • Health

    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…