Featured series 
Tag: Research
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Science & Tech
Arctic hit by global warming first
Scientists from the eight nations bordering the Arctic recently enlisted representatives of the region’s native peoples to help assess climate change there. What they found put a human face on a debate often involving distant projections and abstract numbers. Less snow, less sea ice, freezing rain in winter, and the appearance of mosquitoes and robins,…
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Health
Poor fall behind in birth control
Modern contraception has come a long way in the past 20 years, what with diaphragms, hormones, implants, intrauterine devices, condoms, spermicides, and sterilization. But the boom in birth control has been a bust for the poorest women in the world.
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Science & Tech
Light and matter united
Lene Hau has already shaken scientists’ beliefs about the nature of things. Albert Einstein and just about every other physicist insisted that light travels 186,000 miles a second in free space, and that it can’t be speeded-up or slowed down. But in 1998, Hau, for the first time in history, slowed light to 38 miles…
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Campus & Community
Undergrad grants available through Schlesinger Library
The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America invites Harvard undergraduates to make use of the library’s collections with competitive awards (ranging from $100 to $2,500) for relevant research projects.
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Campus & Community
Ten physicians awarded grants to focus on patient safety
Ten physicians from a cross-section of Harvard teaching hospitals have been awarded a total of $500,000 in grants by CRICO/RMF – the patient safety and medical malpractice insurance company owned by and serving the Harvard-affiliated medical community.
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Campus & Community
Ash Institute awards faculty grants
The Roy and Lila Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University has awarded $245,000 in grants for faculty research and retreat in 2007, director Gowher Rizvi recently announced. Each of the nine projects funded supports the goals of the institute by seeking to advance good government and to strengthen democratic institutions worldwide…
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Campus & Community
Two from Harvard win science medals
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) will honor 18 individuals, including two Harvard researchers, for their fundamental contributions to human knowledge. Harvard’s award recipients are Randy Lee Buckner, professor of psychology, and Richard M. Losick, Maria Moors Cabot Professor of Biology.
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Health
Marathon running can damage a heart
Running 26.2 miles is not for the faint of heart. Abnormalities in heart structure and function were found in men and women who ran the Boston Marathon in 2004 and 2005 by Harvard Medical School researchers.
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Health
Big brains better for birds
As you might guess, big-brained birds survive better in the wild than those less cerebral for their size. Scientists guessed that too, but they had to prove it to themselves.
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Health
Mystery muscles make mightier mice
Scientists have muscled in on a genetic switch that allows mice to run longer and faster. Humans possess the same switch, so the discovery might open new paths to treating muscle-wasting diseases and building better bodies.
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Health
World’s largest flower evolved from family of much tinier blooms
The plant with the world’s largest flower – typically a full meter across, with a bud the size of a basketball – evolved from a family of plants whose blossoms are nearly all tiny, botanists write this week in the journal Science. Their genetic analysis of rafflesia reveals that it is closely related to a…
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Campus & Community
Sengupta wins $4.1 million ‘Era of Hope’ award for breast cancer advances
An assistant professor of medicine at Harvard has won a $4.1 million “Era of Hope” scholar award from the U.S. Defense Department’s Breast Cancer Research Program in support of his cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research aimed at fighting breast and other types of cancer.
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Campus & Community
HMS’s Szostak wins prestigious Lasker
Jack W. Szostak, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, is among this year’s Lasker Award winners. Now celebrating its 61st anniversary, the Lasker Awards are the nation’s most distinguished honor for outstanding contributions to basic and clinical medical research, as well as for special achievement in the medical research enterprise.
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Health
New myeloma drug proves more potent, less toxic than thalidomide
A designer drug significantly less toxic than thalidomide has shown impressive activity in prolonging survival of patients with advanced multiple myeloma, report researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. A multicenter Phase II study of lenalidomide, an altered version of thalidomide, found a response rate of 25 percent among patients with myeloma that had recurred despite multiple…
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Health
Prostate treatment has risks
A treatment mainstay for prostate cancer puts men at increased risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease, according to a large observational study published in the Sept. 20 Journal of Clinical Oncology. “Men with prostate cancer have high five-year survival rates, but they also have higher rates of noncancer mortality than healthy men,” says study author…
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Campus & Community
Jim Kim, former HIV director at WHO, to head HSPH center
Jim Yong Kim, a former director of the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS unit, has been appointed director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). He will become François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Health and Human Rights at the School.
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Health
HSCI/MGH researchers identify gene product involved in stem cell aging and death
A multi-institutional team of Harvard researchers may have advanced our understanding of physiological aging with a new study in which they greatly reduced the impact of aging on blood stem cells. A report on their findings appears in the latest edition of the journal Nature along with similar but independent findings from research teams at…
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Health
Interns continue to work overly long shifts, study finds
That intern working on you at the hospital may be so sleep-deprived his or her performance is no better than that of a drunk. That’s one conclusion of a national study by investigators at the Harvard Medical School.
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Campus & Community
HMS Dept. of Ophthalmology awarded RPB grant
The Harvard Medical School (HMS) Department of Ophthalmology was recently awarded a grant from Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB) for $110,000 to help support research into the causes, treatment, and prevention of diseases that cause blindness.
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Campus & Community
Harvard Fulbright Scholars named
Nine Harvard College students who graduated this past June and 14 current and former graduate students of the University have been named U.S. Fulbright Scholars for the 2006-07 academic year.
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Campus & Community
Government reps visit campus, learn from researchers
As a part of the Office of Government, Community and Public Affairs program to introduce individuals involved in federal funding activities to Harvard researchers, a delegation from the National Science Foundation and the House Appropriations Committee spent this past Monday (Aug. 21) on campus.
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Health
Nanowire arrays can detect signals along individual neurons
Opening a whole new interface between nanotechnology and neuroscience, scientists at Harvard University have used slender silicon nanowires to detect, stimulate, and inhibit nerve signals along the axons and dendrites of live mammalian neurons.
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Science & Tech
Measuring one of the universe’s building blocks
Only a few people think deeply about electrons. One is Gerald Gabrielse, Leverett Professor of Physics at Harvard University. In the past 20 years, he has discovered new things about them, things that even Albert Einstein never knew. And he’s trained a half-dozen young Ph.D.s in the business of how subatomic particles make the universe…
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Health
Mental casualties of Vietnam War persist
More than 30 years after the end of the war in Vietnam, the effect of lingering stress on Americans who fought there continues to cause stress among researchers.
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Health
Heat waves deadliest for blacks, diabetics
Heat waves, like the one that scorched the country in July, are more deadly for some people than for others. Poor blacks and diabetics fare the worst. As you might guess, extreme heat is also hard on the elderly. But as you might not guess, extreme cold has a greater impact.
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Science & Tech
Deep-sea sediments could safely store man-made carbon dioxide
An innovative solution for the man-made carbon dioxide fouling our skies could rest far beneath the surface of the ocean, say scientists at Harvard University. They’ve found that deep-sea sediments could provide a virtually unlimited and permanent reservoir for this gas that has been a primary driver of global climate change in recent decades, and…
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Campus & Community
Women far behind in patent awards
Women who strive to make new biological discoveries at universities are awarded less than half the number of patents than their male colleagues.
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Health
Computer use deleted as carpal tunnel syndrome cause
The popular belief that excessive computer use causes painful carpal tunnel syndrome has been contradicted by experts at Harvard Medical School. According to them, even as much as seven hours a day of tapping on a computer keyboard won’t increase your risk of this disabling disorder.
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Campus & Community
Digging into Harvard Yard
It looks like the stuff any gardener might find while turning over a new tomato bed: rusty nails, chunks of glass, maybe a sprinkler head or two. But to these Harvard anthropology students, it is a potential gold mine of information.