Featured series 
Tag: Research
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Health
Infants are able to recognize quantity
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…
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Health
BWH-led tuberculosis research project receives $14M NIH grant
Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Partners In Health (PIH) have received a grant of $14 million over five years from the National Institutes of Health to study multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). The goal of the project is…
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Health
How brain cells make good connections
Harvard neuroscientist Venkatesh N. Murthy has a sunny second-floor office on Divinity Avenue, where he is a professor in Harvard’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. In one corner is a set of weights and a soccer ball — both untouched in over a year, he said, because of an intensely busy schedule.
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Campus & Community
Harvard to collect, disseminate scholarly articles for faculty
In a move to disseminate faculty research and scholarship more broadly, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) voted Tuesday (Feb. 12) to give the University a worldwide license to make each faculty member’s scholarly articles available and to exercise the copyright in the articles, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit.
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Campus & Community
In brief
Bok Center offering half time postdoc fellowship, HSPH symposium to tackle thorny international health issues, Grants, fellowships available to HMS members, HSPH announces new scholarship opportunity, Docent-led tour at Semitic Museum upcoming, HMS center honors trio for global environmental efforts, Center for Wellness and Health announces spring bounty
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Campus & Community
Korea Institute receives grant for development of programs
The Northeast Asian History Foundation (NEAHF) in Seoul, Korea, has awarded a grant of $1 million over a five-year period to the Early Korea Project at the Korea Institute, Harvard University.
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Campus & Community
Lester Kissel Grants available to undergrads
Harvard College students are eligible to apply for a Lester Kissel Grant in Practical Ethics to support research and writing that makes contributions to the understanding of practical ethics. A number of grants, each up to $3,000, will be awarded on a competitive basis for projects to be conducted during the summer of 2008. The…
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Campus & Community
IOP announces spring resident fellowships
Harvard University’s Institute of Politics (IOP), located at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, has announced the selection of an experienced group of individuals for resident fellowships this spring. Resident fellows interact with students, participate in the intellectual life of the community, and pursue individual studies or projects throughout an academic semester.
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Campus & Community
Shorenstein Center names visiting faculty, fellows for spring
The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, located at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, recently announced its spring fellows.
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Health
Cancer stem cells can be targeted for destruction
It’s increasingly believed among scientists that nearly every cancer contains small populations of highly dangerous cells — cancer stem cells — that can initiate a cancer, drive its progression, and create endless copies of themselves. On the theory that targeting these cells might be an effective therapeutic strategy, researchers around the world have begun isolating…
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Health
Research in brief
Major differences in protocols used to determine brain death; Harvard researchers achieve stem cell milestone; Consortium links chromosome abnormality to autism disorders; Blocking HIV infection; Oral osteoporosis meds appear to reduce the risk of jaw degradation; Six new genetic variants linked to heart-disease risk factor; Gene variation may elevate risk of liver tumor in some…
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Campus & Community
Chemistry Department creates Fieser Fellowship
Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (CCB) has announced the creation of the Mary Fieser Postdoctoral Fellowships Program to promote the recruitment, development, and mentorship of women and underrepresented groups in areas across the chemical sciences.
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Campus & Community
Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation awards fellowships
The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has named three Harvard affiliates among its 17 new fellows. The recipients of this prestigious, three-year award are outstanding postdoctoral scientists conducting basic and translational cancer research in the laboratories of leading senior investigators across the country.
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Health
Drug helps certain brain tumor patients live longer
People who receive high doses of the chemotherapy drug methotrexate to treat a certain type of brain tumor appear to live longer than people receiving other treatments, according to research published in the Jan. 29 issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
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Health
Chimpanzees have ‘top guns’ on hunts
While hunting among chimpanzees is a group effort, key males known as “impact hunters” are highly influential within the group. They are more likely to initiate a hunt, and hunts rarely occur in their absence, according to a new study. The findings, which appear in the current issue of Animal Behaviour, shed light on how…
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Health
Suicide risk factors consistent globally
Risk factors for suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts are consistent across countries, and include having a mental disorder and being female, younger, less educated, and unmarried. So says new research from Harvard University and World Health Organization (WHO) World Mental Health Survey Initiative. The study examined both the prevalence and the risk factors for suicide…
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Health
‘Where do I come from?’
Harvard graduates often return to the University to let their professors know what they’ve been up to since they finished their degree.
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Campus & Community
Australia-Harvard Fellowships named
A biologist, a geologist, and a statistician are among the winners of the 2008 Australia-Harvard Fellowship, the Harvard Club of Australia Foundation has announced. Diversities of career stage and profession characterize this year’s list of seven new fellows.
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Campus & Community
Cancer research pioneer Judah Folkman dies suddenly at 74
Cancer research pioneer Judah Folkman, the Andrus Professor of Pediatric Surgery and professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School (HMS), died on Jan. 14 of a heart attack. Folkman, who was also the director of the Vascular Biology Program at Children’s Hospital Boston, was 74.
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Arts & Culture
‘The diverse ways history can be written’
Relocating to a foreign city for a new job can be stressful in the most congenial circumstances. Trying to depart your home country in the middle of a Communist coup? As Serhii Plokhii, Hrushevs’kyi Professor of Ukrainian History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, can tell you — that’s downright complicated.
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Health
Bonsai collection highlights age, beauty
The foliage is green and youthful, but the twisted, gnarled trunks show the trees’ age. But that’s the point, of course.
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Science & Tech
Seabed microbe study leads to low-cost power, light for the poor
A Harvard biology professor’s fascination with seafloor microbes has led to the development of a revolutionary, low-cost power system consuming garbage, compost, and other waste that could provide light for the developing world.
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Health
Newly discovered type of cell death may end up inhibiting tumor growth
Sometimes healthy cells commit suicide. In the 1970s, scientists showed that a type of programmed cell death called apoptosis plays a key role in development, and the 2002 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine recognized their work. As apoptotic cells degrade, they display standard characteristics, including irregular bulges in the membrane and nuclear fragmentation.
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Health
Slow reading in dyslexia is tied to disorganized brain tracts
Dyslexia marked by poor reading fluency — slow and choppy reading — may be caused by disorganized, meandering tracts of nerve fibers in the brain, according to researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). Their study, using the latest imaging methods, gives researchers a glimpse of what may go wrong…
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Health
Blood stem cell’s roles could help clarify pathogenesis
No other stem cell is more thoroughly understood than the blood, or hematopoietic, stem cell. These occasional and rare cells, scattered sparingly throughout the marrow and capable of replenishing an entire blood system, have been the driving force behind successful bone marrow transplants for decades. Scientists, for the most part, have seen this as the…
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Health
Brain systems less coordinated with age
Some brain systems become less coordinated with age even in the absence of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study from Harvard University. The results help to explain why advanced age is often accompanied by a loss of mental agility, even in an otherwise healthy individual.
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Health
Increasing growth hormone release reduces abdominal fat
Treatment with an investigational drug that induces the release of growth hormone significantly improved the symptoms of HIV lipodystrophy, a condition involving redistribution of fat and other metabolic changes in patients receiving combination drug therapy for HIV infection.
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Nation & World
The importance of early education
Forty-six years ago, a working-class town in Michigan began a program that changed lives. “Mind-blowing,” one scholar called it at Harvard last week.
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Campus & Community
Three from Harvard selected as Rhodes Scholars
Two Harvard seniors and a recent graduate have been chosen as Rhodes Scholars. Clara L. Blättler of Brookline, Mass., and Shayak Sarkar, of Edinburg, Texas, were among the 32 Americans chosen for the prestigious scholarship that funds two or three years of study at the University of Oxford in England. Sammy K. Sambu has been…