Featured series 
Tag: Work in Progress
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Health
Breast-feeding may limit teenage obesity
Infants who were breast-fed more than formula-fed, or who were breast-fed for longer periods, had approximately 20 percent lower risk of being overweight in their preteen and teen years, according to a recent study. In this study, breast-feeding included feeding infants breast milk extracted from breast pumps. The implications are dramatic. “Breast-feeding may prevent obesity…
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Science & Tech
What determines who goes to college and who does not?
More than ever, policymakers are adopting merit-based, rather than need-based, financial aid programs, a trend that disquiets Harvard Graduate School of Education Assistant Professor Bridget Terry Long. In Georgia, for instance, a new state policy offers students with a B-average or higher free tuition at an in-state public college of their choice. Such plans are…
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Science & Tech
Doctoral student developing Internet search tool
Harvard Graduate School of Education doctoral student Kathleen Guinee is developing a computer-based tool to make searching the Internet easier for all students. Her research so far has focused on understanding students’ search strategies on the Web. Guinee gave 16 computer campers an assignment to gather information about islands of their choosing. The more successful…
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Health
New drug dissolves stomach tumors
Since July 2000, Harvard and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researcher George Demetri and his colleagues have treated 148 patients with a rare, lethal stomach cancer known as GIST (Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor). Eighty-six of them have been taking the drug long enough to evaluate its results, and half of these patients showed a 50 percent or greater…
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Health
A potential new anthrax therapy
A vaccine to protect humans against anthrax already exists, but since infection is rare, a widespread vaccination program is not practical. To be effective against anthrax, antibiotics must be given before symptoms actually develop, which is little use to those who are infected. An unvaccinated victim of anthrax usually dies within a few days. That…
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Health
Caffeine linked to protection from Parkinson’s disease
Parkinson’s disease is a progressive nervous disease occurring generally after age 50. It destroys brain cells that produce dopamine and is characterized by muscular tremor, slowing of movement, weakness and facial paralysis. Men who drank four to five cups per day of caffeinated coffee cut the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease nearly in half compared…
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Science & Tech
Handheld calculator measures risk of heart attack
When a patient goes to a hospital emergency room with worsening chest pain, doctors must quickly decide whether that person should be given medication and sent home, or whether he or she should undergo aggressive treatment. Now a new diagnostic tool helps physicians to decide the proper course of action. Researchers at Brigham and Women’s…
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Health
Medicare rules restrict good care for dying patients
Many health care providers believe that Medicare regulations block them from providing good care to dying patients. Researchers from Harvard Medical School, the Harvard School of Public Health, and RAND discovered that fact by conducting systematic interviews of health care providers. The providers were asked about fee-for-service Medicare coverage and payments for end-of-life care. Patients…
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Health
Women’s menstrual cycle holds clue to cocaine response
During the first half of their menstrual cycles, when their estrogen levels are high, women are protected from the brain-damaging effects of cocaine use, according to a research study conducted at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., by a Harvard researcher and colleagues. Researcher Marc Kaufman believes that the finding could lead to a new drug…
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Health
Circadian rhythms may distinguish Alzheimer’s disease
Researcher David Harper and his colleagues monitored two key components of the circadian system — the rise and fall of core body temperature and the waxing and waning of spontaneous motor activity — in 38 dementia patients with either Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia, frontotemporal degeneration. They found that body temperature reached its…
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Health
First domino falls in research on sense of touch
Unlike the other four senses, touch is ubiquitous, involving sensory terminals dispersed over the outside and on the inside of the body. This system encodes a variety of sensations in addition to touch, such as pain, vibration, pressure, stretch, itch, texture, and temperature. The system is sensitive to certain chemical states like painful tissue acidity,…
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Health
Scientists look people in the ‘I’
Harvard researchers seek a scientific answer to a question posed by 16th century philosopher René Descartes: “What is this ‘I’ that I know?” “Understanding the brain essence of self-awareness helps us come closer to understanding what makes us conscious human beings,” says researcher Alvaro Pascual-Leone. “We are able to reflect on ourselves and our actions.…
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Science & Tech
Bolstering private environmental management
How can government agencies best regulate private firms’ impact on the environment? One popular new approach — advocated by state agencies and by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — is to create “tracks” of environmental performance to identify strong and weak performers. Strong performers receive recognition and rewards, including flexibility in meeting enforcement goals. Two…
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Health
Pain promoter plays unexpected role in central nervous system
Despite all the attention it draws in patients, pain has only in recent years been deemed a subject worthy of scientific scrutiny.
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Health
Accomplice fingered in cholera toxicity
A study published in March 2001 revealed one of the ways that cholera toxin hijacks some of the cell’s own machinery. In uncovering part of the toxin’s trail, a team led by Tom Rapoport, Howard Hughes investigator and Harvard Medical School professor of cell biology, has also identified a novel mechanism for chaperoning the unfolding…
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Science & Tech
Harvard faculty press aggressive agenda for AIDS fight in Africa
A statement signed by more than 100 Harvard faculty members calls upon wealthy countries, in partnership with poor countries, to establish a global trust fund to make life-prolonging antiretroviral therapy available in the areas of the world hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic. The statement is the first of its kind to outline a comprehensive…
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Science & Tech
Gamma-ray astronomers detect “extreme” galaxies
Gamma rays from X-ray emitting galaxies seem to signal the existence of what astronomers are calling “extreme” galaxies. An international team of astrophysicists made the discovery of very-high-energy gamma rays, confirming the hypothesis of an Italian group that galaxies which emit strongly in the highest energy X-rays would also emit the most energetic gamma rays.…
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Health
Cancer cells’ immortality may depend on longevity protein
A team of Harvard Medical School researchers has identified a protein that 10 percent of tumor cells use to attain an immortal state. By blocking the molecule, it may be possible to stop these cancer cells from proliferating. The approach might also be used as part of a two-pronged strategy to combat the remaining 90…
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Health
Human genome tally: Is recount in order?
The surprising finding that humans have fewer genes than expected led to endless speculations and editorial comments. Would biotech stocks be threatened? Should humans be more humble? Were entirely new theories needed to explain our biological complexity? But these opionions all relied on the idea that comparing the draft sequences of the human genome that…
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Health
Nonsmoking college students 40 percent less likely to take up smoking when they live in smoke-free dorms
Although 81 percent of colleges prohibit smoking in all public areas, only 27 percent prohibit smoking in students’ dormitories. Harvard School of Public Health researchers say the finding sends a clear message that colleges can influence students not to smoke by banning the practice where they live. “These findings suggest that smoke-free dorms may help…
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Health
Rules for music wired into the brain
“Music is in our genes,” says Mark Jude Tramo, a musician, prolific songwriter, and neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School. “Many researchers like myself are trying to understand melody, harmony, rhythm, and the feelings they produce, at the level of individual brain cells. At this level, there may be a universal set of rules that governs…
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Health
Surgery without scalpels
Paul Simmons, a 29-year-old Maine farmer, suffered from a lung tumor. In February 2001, at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a probe containing a long needle was inserted into his chest and guided to the tumor by a scanning device. As Eric vanSonnenberg and his colleagues did the procedure, they could watch on…
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Science & Tech
Study defines clear roles for parents of teenagers
A new study by the Center for Health Communication at the Harvard School of Public Health cuts through the confusion that parents of teenagers experience because of conflicting advice. The study lidentified key messages about raising teenagers on which experts agree. The results focus on practical guidelines and strategies that can contribute to healthy adolescent…
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Health
Medicare patients give higher overall marks to nonprofit health plans
The first large-scale national study that examines the relationship between health plan characteristics and patient ratings of their plan found that Medicare patients prefer not-for-profit or local plans over for-profit and nationally affiliated health care plans. These results are consistent with the growing number of other studies that have shown poorer performance in some aspects…
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Health
Majority of Alzheimer’s plaques cleared from brains of living mice
Harvard Medical School researchers, working with scientists at Elan Pharmaceuticals, cleared 70 percent of Alzheimer’s plaques from the brains of mice by applying anti-plaque antibodies directly to the mouse brains through tiny holes in their skulls. A year and a half before, Elan scientists showed that they could prevent plaque formation in the Alzheimer’s-prone mice…
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Health
Brain hesitates in assembling mosaic of motion
Your brain must integrate information from many different neurons in the primary visual cortex to interpret movement. But how does this complicated process work? Richard Born and Christopher Pack of Harvard Medical School report that an area of the brain known as the middle temporal (MT) visual area has a dynamic solution to the problem…
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Health
Lyme disease vaccine found cost-effective only for those at high risk
Lyme disease, a bacterial infection transmitted through deer tick bites, is rapidly emerging in the U.S. and currently affects about 15,000 people each year. But incidence varies widely according to region, with the highest rates in the Northeast and north central states. A group of researchers has looked at the cost-effectiveness of vaccination against Lyme…
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Health
Simulating disease trends with massive mathematical models
Researcher Karen Kuntz is currently developing a model to evaluate trends in colorectal cancer incidence and mortality. Nearly 50,000 Americans die each year from the disease, despite the fact that more than half of colorectal cancers could potentially be prevented through lifestyle changes and routine screening. With such models, Kuntz and other researchers can help…
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Science & Tech
For billion-dollar deals, risk allocation is key
Not too long ago, when dot-com fever was at its peak, observers of the business world oohed and aahed over venture capital transactions involving millions of dollars. From researcher Benjamin Esty’s perspective, however, these deals seemed like small change. His research, after all, focuses on projects much bigger than the latest e-commerce enterprise. “Most of…
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Science & Tech
Nine keys to a knowledge infrastructure
Yesha Y. Sivan, CEO of the K2K Knowledge Infrastructure Laboratory and a visiting scholar at Harvard, has outlined a strategy to allow knowledge-based organizations to plan, implement and evaluate the success of their knowledge management (KM) strategies. In the emerging field of knowledge management, a bridge between the theoretical and the practical has been missing;…