Featured series 
Tag: Work in Progress
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Health
How embryonic stem cells become fine-tuned brains
Research by Michael Greenberg, Harvard Medical School professor of neurology at Children’s Hospital, begins to explain how the embryonic brain’s stem cells decide whether to mature into nerve or glial cells as development proceeds. Greenberg and colleagues reported that neurogenin, a protein known to nudge stem cells toward turning into neurons, does so by actively…
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Health
Gene initiates joint formation
Researchers at Harvard Medical School have identified a molecule that plays a central role in the initiation of joint formation. Studying limb formation in the developing chick, postdoctoral fellow Christine Hartmann and her adviser, Clifford Tabin, Harvard Medical School professor of genetics, found that a previously uncharacterized member of the Wnt family, Wnt14, was expressed…
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Science & Tech
Radiation limits narrowing of arteries after stent
The results of a trial directed by the Harvard Clinical Research Institute and the Cardiovascular Data Analysis Center indicate there may be an effective alternative to placement of a stent to prevent artery narrowing after angioplasty. That alternative is intracoronary radiation therapy, or “brachytherapy.” The first-of-its-kind trial tested the safety and efficacy of the delivery…
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Health
In human genome race, competition spurred better science
The conflicts between the two teams — one publicly funded, one private — that raced to sequence the human genome often drew more attention than the actual completion of the project itself. A team of Harvard researchers found that the rivalry spurred and improved a potentially sluggish public project. And an important consequence of the…
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Health
Growth factor seen to reverse loss of muscle from aging, disease
Previous work by Nadia Rosenthal of Harvard Medical School and her colleagues showed that injection of a virus directing the expression of a molecule known as insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) into a skeletal muscle resulted in a much larger and stronger muscle. Now research described by Rosenthal and colleagues illustrates that the effect of…
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Health
T-cell response to HIV proteins may make them vaccine candidates
Development of a vaccine against HIV-1 has long focused on the virus’s structural proteins. These molecules are expressed relatively late in the viral life cycle, after HIV-1 has decreased the expression of an important set of cellular proteins involved in the body’s ability to fight viral infections. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical…
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Health
Specific gene provides health benefits for moderate drinkers
Moderate alcohol consumption among people who have a specific version of a gene that metabolizes alcohol yields health benefits — less risk of heart disease and higher good cholesterol levels. “The study results support that it is the alcohol in alcoholic beverages that is responsible for the reduction in risk of heart disease, not other…
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Health
Increased consumption of soda promotes childhood obesity
Soft drinks are currently the leading source of added sugars in the daily diet of young Americans. Now, researchers have conducted the first long-term study to examine soda consumption and its precise impact on children’s body weight. Their findings show that for each additional daily serving of a sugar-sweetened soft drink, the incidence of obesity…
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Health
Increased fruit and vegetable consumption does not reduce risk of breast cancer
A recent Harvard study examined the association between fruit and vegetable consumption and breast cancer. The researchers drew participants from eight separate studies that spanned four countries and involved more than 350,000 women. Women who consumed the highest amount of fruits and vegetables were compared with those who consumed the lowest amount. The analysis revealed…
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Health
Cloak partly lifted on tiny Chlamydia
The Boston Public Health Commission released 1999 statistics showing 2 percent of the city’s 15- to 19-year-olds have chlamydia. Boston’s minority girls were reported to have infection rates of almost 6 percent, and a 1998 Journal of the American Medical Association study of sexually active teenage girls in Baltimore found infection rates approaching 30 percent.…
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Health
Direct damage from radiation may be passed to neighboring cells
Cells communicate, organize, share resources, and form direct connections with one another. They also are affected by damage to their neighbors. Research led by John Little of the Harvard School of Public Health shows that cells hit by radiation can send signals to neighboring cells that result in DNA damage. These findings challenge the long-held…
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Health
Surprise route found for spread of breast cancer
Cancer cells are thought to enter the lymph nodes through the lymphatic system — a multipurpose welter of vessels — but how the cells actually make their way out of a primary tumor and into the lymphatic system has been an enduring puzzle. Massachusetts General Hospital researchers reported recently that they have identified a new…
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Health
Studies show new players and patterns in vertebrate heart development
Cell biologists have identified proteins capable of promoting heart development — at least in frogs and birds. They report that the proteins Dkk1 and Crescent, which inhibit regulatory proteins of the Wnt family, can induce formation of a beating heart in tissue culture from Xenopus laevis and chick embryos. Other Wnt antagonists lacked this activity.…
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Health
New gene found in fruit flies could impact human medicine
In one type of fruit fly, Drosophilia melanogaster, but not in others, researchers found a gene that carries instructions for making a motor that gives this species’ sperm extra horsepower. The researchers were not looking specifically for such a gene but came across it serendipitously during a general investigation of motor proteins. Various creatures boast…
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Health
Determining colon cancer risk is becoming easier
More than 50 percent of colon cancers can be prevented through lifestyle changes and regular screening tests. The lifestyle changes are the same ones that reduce your risk of heart disease and other cancers. Be more physically active by getting at least three hours a week of physical exercise. Eat less red meat and more…
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Science & Tech
Should computer code be considered free speech?
Unlike all other forms of “speech” that are protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, computer source code holds a unique place in the law. Computer source code can be copyrighted, like a book. And it can be patented like a machine or a process. The result is confusion in the legal arena,…
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Health
Using statistics to understand genes
Professor Jun Liu studies repetitive patterns in the DNA that lies between genes. This material contains instructions for regulating the expression of genes, and it is involved in whether the proteins produced by genes will become part of a brain or a big toe. These on/off switches can be found by doing difficult, time-consuming experiments…
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Science & Tech
Internet will enhance, not replace, current educational models
In January 2001, Harvard information technology experts outlined a future in which the Internet, computers, and other technologies will enhance rather than replace the current educational experience. What that means for students is experiencing, among other things, virtual trading on a virtual stock floor — so they can hear the noise and feel the pressure…
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Science & Tech
The U.S. and faith-based social initiatives
U.S. President George W. Bush has signaled that he is serious about offering federal support to faith-based social service initiatives. What does that mean for the separation of church and state, and how will it affect the country? A collection of essays published by Harvard Divinity School points out that religious motivation has often generated…
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Health
No link between hepatitis B vaccine and risk of multiple sclerosis
The French government in 1998 decided to temporarily suspend hepatitis B vaccine programs in schools after several cases of multiple sclerosis were reported a few weeks after the vaccine had been administered in 1995 and 1997 as part of a mass immunization program. Multiple sclerosis is a chronic degenerative disease of the central nervous system.…
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Science & Tech
Dark night sky tells us about structure and formation of solar system
The darkness of the night sky is one of astronomy’s great puzzles. An infinite universe uniformly filled with stars and galaxies should produce an infinitely bright night sky, Johannes Kepler concluded 400 years ago. So why is the sky dark? It has to do with the finite size of the Milky Way Galaxy and the…
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Health
Protein may play double role in issuing genetic gag order
So cells can differentiate and maintain their specialized identities, large sections of unneeded genes must be turned off. During cell division, the stability of every chromosome depends upon sections of chromosomes remaining silent. Cancer is believed to be due, in part, to the loss of cell identity and unstable chromosomes. Aging also may be linked…
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Health
Fish may reduce risk of stroke in women
“Our research suggests that women can reduce their risk of thrombotic stroke by up to 48 percent by eating fish two to four times per week,” said Kathryn M. Rexrode, Harvard Medical School instructor in medicine. “The findings also indicate that higher intake of omega-3 fatty acids may help women reduce their risk of stroke.”…
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Science & Tech
Harvard researchers stop, restart, light
Albert Einstein theorized that light cannot travel faster than 186,282 miles per second. But he never said it couldn’t go slower. Lene Hau, a physics professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, says Einstein would “probably be stunned” at the results of her recent experiments. Working in her laboratory at the…
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Health
Alzheimer’s vaccine looks promising
In 1993, Harvard researchers Dennis Selkoe and Howard Weiner got together over dinner to talk about how they might combine their expertise to find a better treatment for Alzheimer’s, a disease that robs more than 4 million Americans of their cognition and personalities. Selkoe has spent much of his research career trying to understand how…
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Health
Gene for familial dysautonomia discovered
Familial dysautonomia is a neurodegenerative disease that mainly targets Ashkenazi Jews. The disease, which affects one in every 3,600 members of this group, impairs the development of the sensory and autonomic nervous systems. Babies born with the disease often have trouble sucking and swallowing, forcing many to be tube fed. Nor can they taste or…
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Science & Tech
Soft news and critical journalism eroding audiences
A rise in soft news and critical journalism “may now be hastening the decline in news audiences” and “weakening the foundation of democracy by diminishing the public’s information about public affairs and its interest in politics,” according to a Harvard study. The study, conducted by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public…