Featured series 
Tag: Research
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Health
First targeted therapy for melanoma brings hope
In a demonstration that even some of the most hard-to-treat tumors may one day succumb to therapies aimed at molecular “weak points,” researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute report the first instance in which metastatic melanoma has been driven into remission by a targeted therapy.
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Health
Life expectancy worsening or stagnating
One of the major aims of the U.S. health system is improving the health of all people, particularly those segments of the population at greater risk of health disparities. In fact, overall life expectancy in the United States increased more than seven years for men and more than six years for women between 1960 and…
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Campus & Community
20 faculty members named to 2008 class of AAAS fellows
The American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAAS), one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies and independent policy research centers, today (April 28) announced the election of 20 Harvard University faculty members and affiliates to its new class of members.
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Campus & Community
Social Science Research Council gives grant to Harvard centers
The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) has awarded $52,289 to three Harvard centers: the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and the Harvard Asia Center.
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Nation & World
Money spent on others can buy happiness
New research by one Harvard scholar implies that happiness can be found by spending money on others. Michael Norton, assistant professor of business administration in the marketing unit at the Harvard Business School (HBS), conducted a series of studies with his colleagues Elizabeth Dunn and Lara Aknin at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
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Health
Nobel Prize winner discusses judgment and intuition
“Most of the time,” said noted psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman to a packed house of students, scholars, and faculty at the Yenching Auditorium (April 15), “we run at very low effort.” It was a sobering claim for the heady academic set, but according to Kahneman, no one is immune from the diagnosis. Even…
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Health
Genetics key in new knowledge about complex diseases
Genetic researchers crossed a critical threshold last year in their ability to understand complex diseases, posting a number of new discoveries that advanced knowledge of ailments caused by small contributions from multiple genes, the environment, and other causes.
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Health
Less sleep, more TV leads to fat toddlers
Infants and toddlers who sleep less than 12 hours a day are twice as likely to become overweight by age 3 than children who sleep longer. In addition, high levels of television viewing combined with less sleep elevate the risk, so that children who sleep less than 12 hours and who view two or more…
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Health
Potent new strategy for mapping animal species shakes up tree of life
Since the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” efforts to trace evolutionary relationships among different classes of organisms have largely relied on external morphological observations.
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Campus & Community
Astronaut, volunteer Stephanie D. Wilson honored
NASA astronaut Stephanie D. Wilson ’88 was awarded the Women’s Professional Achievement Award at the 11th annual Harvard College Women’s Leadership Awards ceremony held April 3 at the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square. Additionally, Harvard senior Katherine Beck received the Women’s Leadership Award. Both honors were presented by the Harvard College Women’s Center.
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Campus & Community
Museum of Science to honor McCarthy with Walker Prize
James McCarthy, the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, will accept the 2008 Walker Prize from the Boston Museum of Science on April 7. The prize recognizes “meritorious published scientific investigation and discovery” in any scientific field.
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Campus & Community
Former fellow establishes program at Weatherhead
The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs has established a new Program on Transatlantic Relations, thanks to a donation by Pierre Keller of Geneva. Keller was a fellow in 1979–80 at the then–Center for International Affairs, as part of a program that welcomes senior-level diplomats, politicians, military officers, and private-sector professionals to the University for a…
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Health
Panel discusses history, future of alternative therapies
The history of alternative and complementary medical treatments can inform the medicine of today. That was the message of “Sectarian (to Unorthodox to Alternative) to Complementary Medicine: What Historical Perspectives can Tell Modern Medicine,” an afternoon of talks sponsored by the Countway Library’s Center for the History of Medicine on March 26.
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Health
FDA deadlines may compromise drug safety by rushing approvals
Many medications are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the brink of congressionally mandated deadlines, and those drugs are more likely to face later regulatory intervention than those approved with greater deliberation, researchers at Harvard University have found. Drugs fast-tracked by the FDA are more likely to eventually be withdrawn from…
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Health
Common aquatic animals show resistance to radiation
Scientists at Harvard University have found that a common class of freshwater invertebrate animals called bdelloid rotifers are extraordinarily resistant to ionizing radiation, surviving and continuing to reproduce after doses of gamma radiation much greater than that tolerated by any other animal species studied to date.
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Science & Tech
Laser precision to help find new Earths
Harvard scientists have unveiled a new laser-measuring device that they say will provide a critical advance in the resolution of current planet-finding techniques, making the discovery of Earth-sized planets possible.
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Health
Scientists learn what’s ‘up’ with retinal cells
Harvard University researchers have discovered a new type of retinal cell that plays an exclusive and unusual role in mice: detecting upward motion. The cells reflect their function in the physical arrangement of their dendrites, branchlike structures on neuronal cells that form a communicative network with other dendrites and neurons in the brain.
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Health
Link between deep sleep and visual learning
A relationship has been observed between deep sleep and the ability of the brain to learn specific tasks. Researchers at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have now shown that the processes that regulates deep sleep may affect visual learning. These results are published in the March 12 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.
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Health
Study shows indicator for cardiovascular events
A study appearing in this week’s (March 19) New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) confirms that a combination of gene variants previously associated with cholesterol levels does reflect patients’ cholesterol levels and can signify increased risk of heart attack, stroke, or sudden cardiac death. Led by researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) cardiology division,…
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Health
MGH initiates Phase I of its diabetes trial
Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have initiated a Phase I clinical trial to reverse type 1 diabetes. The trial is exploring whether the promising results from the laboratory of Denise Faustman can be applied in human diabetes.
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Health
Study: Know thyself and you’ll know others better
Using functional MRI (fMRI) scanning, researchers have found that the region of the brain associated with introspective thought “lights up” when people infer the thoughts of others like themselves. However, this is not the case when we’re considering people we think of as different politically, socially, or religiously. Published in the current issue of the…
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Health
Punishment doesn’t earn rewards
Individuals who engage in costly punishment do not benefit from their behavior, according to a new study published this week in the journal Nature by researchers at Harvard University and the Stockholm School of Economics.
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Health
Increasing U.S. support could save a million South Africans by 2012
More that 1.2 million deaths could be prevented in South Africa over the next five years by accelerating efforts to provide access to antiretroviral therapy (ART), according to a study released March 13 in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
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Health
MGH receives Gates Foundation grant
The Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has received a five-year, $20.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to expand an international program investigating the biological factors underlying immune system control of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The grant provides support to the International HIV Controllers Study, which currently involves researchers from more…
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Health
Late treatment with letrozole can reduce cancer recurrence risk
Treatment with the aromatase inhibitor letrozole (Femara) can reduce the risk of breast cancer recurrence even when initiated one to seven years after a course of tamoxifen therapy. The results of a study involving women originally in the placebo arm of an international trial of letrozole will appear in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and…
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Health
Harvard faculty members discuss state of research
A panel of experts said Tuesday (March 11) that stem cell research’s biggest impact on patients’ health likely won’t come from therapies that inject stem cells or implant tissues made from them, but rather from the knowledge gained by examining diseased tissues grown from the cells.
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Health
President testifies for increase in NIH funding
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…
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Health
HSPH establishes new three-year grant program
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.
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Health
Of flies and fish
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…
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Health
Gene variants probably increase risk for anxiety disorders
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…