Tag: Research

  • Science & Tech

    Stem cells: Mending a broken heart?

    Dr. Kenneth Chien speaks about a cardiac stem cell discovery that may be the first step on the path to regenerating healthy heart muscle.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Study Finds Pro and Cons to Prostate Surgeries

    People intuitively think that a minimally invasive approach has fewer complications, even in the absence of data,” said Dr. Jim C. Hu, the study’s lead author, who is director of urologic robotic and minimally invasive surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Stephen Lagakos, talented biostatistician with a common touch

    “His seminal contributions to the field of AIDS research helped provide crucial statistical foundations upon which we could better combat this terrible disease,’’ Julio Frenk, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, said in a statement issued yesterday.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Tweens convene for learning, support on body image

    In a study about weight and body satisfaction, researchers measured the height and weight of 4,254 schoolchildren from Nova Scotia and asked them how much they agreed with the statement “I like the way I look.”

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Body’s Own Antioxidant May Slow Parkinson’s Decline, Study Says

    Today’s study “suggests a new approach in slowing down the rate of the disease,” said Schwarzschild, an associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, in an Oct. 9 telephone interview. “People live with Parkinson’s disease for decades. We want to make those decades much more manageable and keep people much more mobile….”

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    U.S. study shows mammograms save lives

    “The most effective method for women to avoid death from breast cancer is to have regular mammographic screening,” Dr. Blake Cady of Cambridge Hospital Breast Center and Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts told reporters in a telephone briefing…

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Understanding the Anxious Mind

    Jerome Kagan’s “Aha!” moment came with Baby 19. It was 1989, and Kagan, a professor of psychology at Harvard, had just begun a major longitudinal study of temperament and its effects. Temperament is a complex, multilayered thing, and for the sake of clarity, Kagan was tracking it along a single dimension: whether babies were easily…

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Autism’s genetic roots examined in new government-funded study

    Researchers at Harvard University and Children’s Hospital Boston will sequence the genomes of at least 85 people diagnosed with autism in a bid to tease out the genetic basis for some cases of the neuropsychiatric disorder.

    1 minute
  • 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.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Wilson honored by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden

    Edward O. Wilson has been named Commander, First Class of the Royal Order of the Polar Star by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Belfer Center announces 2009-10 research fellows

    The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) announces 32 new fellows for the 2009-10 academic year.

    1 minute
  • Health

    Betley probes natural power plant

    Harvard chemist Ted Betley is examining the process of photosynthesis to understand and manipulate nature’s engineering.

    4 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Quest for a Long Life Gains Scientific Respect

    In mice, sirtuin activators are effective against lung and colon cancer, melanoma, lymphoma, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease, said David Sinclair, a Harvard Medical School researcher and co-founder of Sirtris. The drugs reduce inflammation, and if they have the same effects in people, could help combat many diseases that have an inflammatory…

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    NIH funds risky, potentially transformative research by Harvard faculty members

    Eighteen faculty members at Harvard and Harvard-affiliated institutions are among 115 scientists nationally whose promising and innovative work was recognized today with the announcement of three grant programs by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    If You Need to Work Better, Maybe Try Working Less

    When members of 12 consulting teams at Boston Consulting Group were each required to take a block of “predictable time off” during every work week, “we had to practically force some professionals” to get away, says Leslie Perlow, the Harvard Business School leadership professor who headed the study.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Aspirin Can Prevent Colon Cancer in High-Risk Group, Study Says

    The Harvard study suggested aspirin could prevent tumors from growing by inhibiting Cox-2, an enzyme that may play a role in the initial growth of a tumor.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Harvard Medical Study Links Lack of Insurance to 45,000 U.S. Deaths a Year

    The Harvard study found that people without health insurance had a 40 percent higher risk of death than those with private health insurance — as a result of being unable to obtain necessary medical care.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Diabetes Medication May Get New Life as Cancer Treatment

    A national tax of 1 cent per ounce of soda and other sugary drinks could stem the United States’ obesity epidemic, while generating $14.9 billion the first year alone, health experts say.

    1 minute
  • Health

    Online encyclopedia makes life searchable

    One hundred and fifty thousand species down, 1.65 million to go. That is the tally for the online Encyclopedia of Life (www.eol.org/), an ambitious two-year-old project with the goal of nothing less than documenting in one place all of the 1.8 million known living species on Earth and making the information available to everyone with…

    3 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Greyser honored by Institute for Public Relations

    Steven A. Greyser, the Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard Business School, has received a special award for his contributions to public relations education and research from the Institute for Public Relations.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Breakthrough on Open Access

    On Monday, Harvard University was among five leading universities that announced a new “Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity” pledge to develop systems to pay open access journals for the articles they publish by the institutions’ scholars.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Is Happiness Catching?

    Nicholas Christakis began taking a new look at this question in 2000 after an experience visiting terminally ill patients in the working-class neighborhoods of Chicago.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    The first tailors? Researchers find ancient fiber

    “Making strings and ropes is a sophisticated invention,” said Ofer Bar-Yosef, a professor of prehistoric archaeology at Harvard University. “They might have used this fiber to create parts of clothing, ropes, or baskets — for items that were mainly used for domestic activities.” The fibers were discovered in an analysis of clay deposits in Dzudzuana…

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Does Infection Boost Prostate Cancer Risk?

    In the new study, Jennifer Stark of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and colleagues analyzed blood samples from 673 men with prostate cancer who participated in the Physicians’ Health Study, a large, ongoing study examining a variety of health issues.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Harvard opens its research repository

    Harvard University this week unveiled its open database of faculty research, with more than a third of its arts and sciences faculty members participating so far. Since the faculty of the main undergraduate college voted in February 2008 to support the system known as Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard, in which professors’ scholarly works…

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Medical grants a boon for Mass.

    Massachusetts biomedical researchers are seeing a windfall from federal stimulus money, with the state receiving more in grants from the National Institutes of Health than all others but California.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Fine Arts Library reopens

    The Fine Arts Library (FAL) is now open in its temporary space in the Littauer Building in the North Yard.

    1 minute
  • Health

    Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation awards fellowships to Harvard scientists

    The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on supporting exceptional early career researchers and innovative cancer research, has selected four Harvard affiliates to receive Damon Runyon fellowships at its May 2009 Fellowship Award Committee review.

    2 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Harvard-Yenching Institute’s 22 visiting scholars, fellows

    The Harvard-Yenching Institute has selected 22 visiting scholars and fellows from major universities in Asia. Established in 1928, the Harvard-Yenching Institute is an independent foundation dedicated to advancing higher education in Asia, with special attention to the study of Asian culture. The group of visiting scholars and fellows includes faculty members and advanced graduate students…

    3 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Committee on African Studies awards 51 summer travel grants

    Through its Africa Initiative, the Harvard Committee on African Studies has awarded 51 grants to Harvard students for travel to sub-Saharan Africa during the summer of 2009. The grants fund internships, language study, senior thesis research, master’s thesis research, and doctoral dissertation research. Twenty-four undergraduates and 27 graduate students were awarded grants, the largest number…

    6 minutes