Featured series 
Tag: Work in Progress
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Health
Sharp declines in heart disease in women
During the course of a 14-year study, female participants’ consumption of red meat dropped by nearly 40 percent, intake of trans fats dropped by more than 30 percent, and use of high-fat dairy products decreased by more than 40 percent. These changes were complemented by increases in consumption of cereal fiber, folic acid, and fish.…
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Health
Hypnosis found to alter the brain
“Hypnosis has a contentious history,” notes Stephen Kosslyn, professor of psychology at Harvard and leader of a study in which people were hypnotized to see color where only shades of gray exist, and to see gray when actually looking at brightly colored rectangles. “Some insist it’s a state of mind that differs from normal states…
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Health
Tissue engineering produces an artificial gland
Your thymus is a walnut-sized gland that sits just above your heart. The master gland of the immune system, one of the thymus’ chief functions is to produce T lymphocytes, which are a type of white blood cell that works to prevent disease. In July 2000, a team of Harvard Medical School researchers at Massachusetts…
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Science & Tech
Medical records play role in domestic violence legal cases
Two researchers studied nearly 100 medical charts of women who had previously been identified as abuse survivors. They found that physicians frequently did not screen for abuse and that the notes taken would not mean much in a courtroom. “The potential risks of documentation to the clinician or the patient appear to be more salient…
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Health
Head lice frequently misdiagnosed
Via an informational Website, researchers asked readers to submit samples of what they thought were head lice or louse eggs. The readers completed questionnaires that asked them their relationship to the infested person and the measures taken to treat the perceived infestation. “An uncomfortably large proportion of the submissions had nothing to do with head…
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Science & Tech
Fighting prostate cancer with radioactive seeds
In November 1997, a team of surgeons headed by Anthoy D’Amico, an associate professor of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School, first used a technique that treats early stages of prostate cancer in a way that, for some patients, may be superior to the usual methods of surgical removal of the gland or seven weeks…
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Health
Active girls who drink colas are five times more likely to fracture bones
In a study, more than 460 ninth- and tenth-grade girls reported their activity levels, soda drinking habits, and history of bone fractures. A researcher found that drinking any type of soda was linked to an increased likelihood of having a bone fracture, and that the greatest increases were for those girls who drank cola beverages,…
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Health
Cognitive testing of elderly could help detect medical problems
Shari Bassuk, research fellow in the Department of Health and Social Behavior at the Harvard School of Public Health, and her colleagues have found that even mild impairments in areas such as memory and orientation were strongly predictive of mortality among people under the age of 80 years old. “There are major implications for these…
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Health
Physically active women reduce risk of stroke
A Harvard study followed 72,488 nurses for eight years and concluded that the more a woman exercises, the lower the odds she will suffer a stroke. Two large Harvard studies of men also show that exercise reduces their chances of getting strokes. However, the more-is-better association has not yet been proven for men as it…
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Science & Tech
Men have distorted image of what women find attractive
Asked by researchers to choose the bodies they would most like to have, male college students in a study picked computer images with 30 pounds more muscle than they actually had. Asked to select their most-wanted body from the same computer images, female college students chose men with 15 to 30 pounds less muscle than…
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Health
New treatment effective against psoriasis
Psoriasis is a skin disease that disfigures people’s bodies with scaly red plaques. Thirteen patients had portions of their psoriasis patches irradiated with intense beams of ultraviolet laser light at Massachusetts General Hospital. Other parts of the plaques were left untreated for comparison. After only five treatments, one patient’s redness, scales, and discomfort disappeared from…
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Science & Tech
Internet revolutionizing way designers (and others) work
Professor Spiro Pollalis, who serves as director of the Center for Design Informatics at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, estimates Internet-based project management networks are now being utilized by as many as 10 percent of architectural design firms, and those numbers are expected to mushroom in the years ahead. “We see the Internet as…
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Health
Biological clock genes identified
“We’ve identified the molecules that we believe form the essential gears of the 24-hour clock,” says researcher Steven Reppert, who is a professor of pediatrics at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital. “This understanding could lead to quicker and more efficient ways to reset the clocks of those suffering from jet lag or genetic sleep disorders, or…
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Health
Study points to more targeted use of Ritalin
An area known as the putamen, located deep in the center of the brain, helps to control movement and attention. Harvard researchers believe that the putamen is involved in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. The finding also suggests that Ritalin may not be effective in treating ADHD. When researchers examined hyperactive, inattentive boys with a new type…
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Health
Researchers face up to liars
What category of people do you think would be best at detecting lies? It’s not Secret Service agents, or psychiatrists, or even mothers. Investigators working at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have found that aphasics — people who, because of stroke or other forms of brain damage, have been robbed of their ability to understand…
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Health
Public health researchers battle West Nile virus
West Nile encephalitis infection, carried by mosquitoes, can cause the brain to swell but rarely leads to death. Many people carry the virus with mild if any symptoms, but people with severe reactions may suffer convulsions, fever, and paralysis. There are no specific treatments for the disease. The virus had never been seen in North…
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Science & Tech
Gamma rays may be left over from cosmic construction project
The origin of the diffuse and pervasive background of gamma-ray radiation that exists over the universe has been one of the great unsolved mysteries in cosmology. Even the known population of powerful extragalactic gamma-ray sources, called “blazars,” can account for no more than a quarter of the gamma-ray background radiation that is observed. According to…
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Science & Tech
Study finds that for young men, family comes first
Breaking ranks with their fathers and grandfathers on the important issue of work-family integration, 71 percent of men 21-39 said in a survey that they would give up some of their pay for more time with their families. “What we’re seeing is a transformation between generations and gender,” said Paula Rayman, director of the Radcliffe…
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Science & Tech
Professor’s survey method opens ‘windows of consciousness’
Bringing together theories and tools from disciplines ranging from psychology to neuroscience, the Mind of the Market Laboratory at Harvard Business School attempts to define and qualify consumers’ and managers’ thoughts and feelings about an array of ideas, from “loyalty” to “privacy” to “chocolate.” The work is spearheaded by the lab’s co-director, Gerald Zaltman, whose…
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Health
Birth of new brain cells induced in birds
Stem cells that are naturally present in the brains of finches were induced to replace lost cells and restore the birds’ ability to sing their distinctive song. “Our results represent the restoration of a brain circuit involved in a complex learned behavior,” says Jeffrey Macklis, associate professor of neurology in the Division of Neuroscience at…
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Health
Unlocking the mystery of artistic taste
“Unlike infants, who share innate preferences about shapes and colors, preschoolers already differ in their artistic tastes,” says Kim Sheridan, a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Using cognitive development, developmental psychology, art, brain-imaging technology, and education, Sheridan is now trying to unlock the mystery of artistic taste. A year in Kenya…
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Health
Treating advanced lung cancer with light
Photodynamic, or light, therapy was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in December 1998. The FDA has also approved using lasers for treatment of advanced stages of cancer of the esophagus. A surgeon can use lasers to shrink a tumor blocking an esophagus in about 15 minutes, as opposed to a five-hour operation to…
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Science & Tech
New generation of faculty members sets new priorities
Although doctoral candidates and new faculty still regard tenure as important when seeking employment, they will consider non-tenure over tenure-track positions if jobs meet other conditions, including desirable geographic location, balance of research and teaching, and competitive salary. “This generation of scholars is very different from previous cohorts,” says researcher Cathy Trower. “They entered academe…
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Science & Tech
Air pollution deadlier than previously thought
The idea that air pollution is harmful is hardly new. However, critics of the previous research of Joel Schwartz, associate professor of environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health, and other air pollution researchers have claimed that those who die from air pollution are the very ill who would have died within a…
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Science & Tech
Digital communications will reshape the way businesses market goods
In a chapter of the forthcoming book Digital Marketing, Harvard Business School Professor John A. Deighton and coauthor Patrick Barwise of the London Business School identify three qualities that distinguish the Web from other mass media. First, the Web fragments its audience’s attention. Where television brings people together and lets advertisers build giant brands and…
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Science & Tech
Computers that are more than the sum of their parts
In the 1960s, a potentially serious drawback threatened further progress toward the computer age. As Harvard Business School Dean Kim Clark and his colleague, Professor Carliss Baldwin, wrote in their book, Design Rules: The Power of Modularity, Volume I (The MIT Press), “The support of older applications and systems was becoming a problem of nightmarish…
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Health
Shadow proteins in thymus may explain how immune system gets to know its own body
Researchers recently identified a protein that appears to work by turning on in the thymus, which lies beneath the breast bone, the production of a wide array of proteins from the body’s periphery. The discovery of the protein called “aire” could shed light not only on how the healthy immune system develops tolerance to its…
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Science & Tech
Immigration experts focus on attitudes of children
Too many immigrants in the United States are staring into what Marcelo and Carola Suarez-Orozco call “a toxic mirror” that seriously compromises the self-image of children who will grow up to be part of American society. The husband-and-wife team, who co-direct the Harvard Immigration Project, believe it’s time for society to remake the image in…