Featured series 
Tag: Work in Progress
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Science & Tech
A multiracial society with segregated schools
The nation’s public schools are becoming steadily more nonwhite, as the minority student enrollment approaches 40 percent of all U.S. public school students, almost twice the share of minority school students during the 1960s. Almost half of all public school students in the West and the South are minority students. The desegregation of black students,…
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Health
Meat consumption may not increase breast cancer risk
After following 88,647 women for 18 years, the largest and longest individual study of its kind to date, researcher Michelle Holmes and her co-investigators found no evidence that intake of meat during mid-life and later was associated with risk of breast cancer. Similarly, the data showed no reduced risk among women who were vegetarians. In…
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Health
Alzheimer’s disease: New theory on how it damages brain
Studies have shown that the buildup in the brain of certain toxic proteins, called amyloids, leads to the emergence of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Research has traditionally focused on how to eliminate or lower the levels of these proteins in the brain as a potential treatment for the disease. But now researchers believe that…
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Health
Men can reduce stroke risk by eating fish
Researchers tracked the diet and health outcomes of more than 43,000 male participants for 12 years. Using detailed food frequency questionnaires, participants were asked how often they ate fish, ranging from never or less than once per month to six or more times per week. The men in the study were also asked about four…
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Science & Tech
New 3-D mammography system may improve breast imaging
Researcher Elizabeth Rafferty of the Massachusetts General Hospital Breast Imaging Service described initial results of a study comparing a new technique, called digital tomosynthesis, to standard mammography. Among the new technique’s advantages is a significant reduction in false positive test results. “The overlap of breast structures presents a major challenge for radiologists, both because these…
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Health
Study of phthalate exposure in humans finds association with sperm DNA damage
Phthalates are a class of compounds used to hold color and scent in many cosmetics and personal care items such as soaps, detergents, skin preparations and aftershave lotions, and they also find their way into food through packaging materials. Di-ethylhexyl phthalate, one form of phthalate, is used to soften a wide range of plastic goods,…
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Health
Study predicts risk of prostate cancer death
Researchers followed 381 people to “identify predictors of time to prostate specific death following external radiation therapy.” “The results of this study give us a better understanding of what form of treatment will extend a patient’s life to a point where he’s more likely to die from causes other than prostate cancer,” says Anthony D’Amico,…
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Health
Bottle-feeding before bed time may increase risk of childhood asthma
Nearly one in 13 children in America has asthma. The National Institutes of Health reports that the prevalence of asthma around the world has doubled in the last 15 years, increasing 160 percent among pre-school age children. Asthma is the third leading cause of hospitalization among children under age 15 and accounts for more than…
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Health
Stem cells reduce brain damage
Mice with the kind of brain damage caused by strokes or cerebral palsy received implants of stem cells that resulted in the spontaneous replacement of many of the missing cells, according to Evan Snyder, a neurologist at the Harvard Medical School, who led the research. In other experiments, stem cells unexpectedly rescued the injured nerve…
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Health
Research finds benefits for adults who have tonsils removed
A study followed 83 chronic tonsillitis sufferers over a three-year period. Brigham and Women’s Hospital researchers found that removing the tonsils was ultimately more effective than antibiotic treatments because those patients who had their tonsils extracted missed only 0.6 days of work a year on average after their tonsillectomy, versus 9.2 workdays before the surgery.…
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Health
Key gene discovered for obesity and diabetes
Obesity is closely associated with insulin resistance and is one of the leading risk factors for type 2 diabetes. Both affect more than 50 percent of the U.S. population. Little has been known about the molecular mechanisms linking these two metabolic diseases. Both are associated with a wide range of inflammatory molecular activity in fatty…
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Science & Tech
Exploring black political thought, now and then
Professor Michael Dawson’s most recent book, “Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African American Mass Political Ideologies” (University of Chicago Press, 2001), brings a historical perspective to black political ideologies. “The work tries to assess, using public opinion materials as well as other types of archival materials, to what degree do some of the historically…
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Health
Drinking and hormones, alone and together, increase risk of breast cancer
According to the American Cancer Society, more than 190,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer annually. It is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women today. Using data from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital-based Nurses’ Health Study, researchers compared women’s use of postmenopausal hormones and their alcohol intake. That data showed that postmenopausal women…
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Science & Tech
Scientists look inside antimatter
“We have obtained the first glimpse inside an antihydrogen atom, and this is a significant step on the way to precision measurements that will allow matter/antimatter comparisons to be made,” says Gerald Gabrielse, professor of physics at Harvard and leader of the research team. Such comparisons could show why antimatter and matter have not destroyed…
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Science & Tech
McElroy says it’s time to stop seeing global warming as political issue
Michael B. McElroy, Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies and director of Harvard’s Center for the Environment, is among the scientists who since the 1970s have been using paleoclimatic data to chart changes in the earth’s atmosphere. To obtain these data, researchers drill several kilometers down into polar ice sheets and extract gases from the…
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Health
Incidence of hip fractures reduced by walking
In the United States, one in every three adults 65 years old or older falls each year, with hip fractures resulting in the greatest number of deaths and most serious health problems. Women account for 80 percent of the 300,000 hip fractures that occur annually. A study, which included investigators from the Harvard School of…
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Health
Long-term memory not fixed until after age one
When does long-term memory develop? This was a natural question for Conor Liston, a Harvard senior, and his mentor Jerome Kagan, Starch Research Professor of Psychology. Liston conducted experiments under Kagan’s supervision, and they came up with an answer. “Our findings suggest that children have great difficulty recalling the past before the end of the…
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Health
Patching up depression
In a study, almost half of the people who wore an antidepressant skin patch recovered after only six weeks, and many of them “showed remarkable improvement much sooner,” according to researcher Alexander Bodkin. “The patch worked, and worked rapidly without toxic side effects. The potential is very exciting.” Bodkin and his colleagues, working at six…
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Health
Food pathogen vector shows promise against cancer
For the past four decades, researchers have poked and prodded Escherichia coli and Listeria monocytogenes – the basic science trade names of sometimes deadly bugs – to discover how they interact with the immune system, invade cells, rob them of nutrients, and blossom within other cells to eventually shut down necessary bodily functions. From his…
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Health
Starship memories
Psychologists are at odds over the idea that people can forget traumatic events then “recover” intact memories of the trauma years later. On one side are clinicians, who observe that painful memories can be repressed, banished from a trauma survivor’s consciousness until they’re “recovered” with the help of certain psychotherapeutic techniques in adulthood. Memory researchers,…
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Health
Study: Use of acetaminophen linked to hypertension
Out of a group of 80,000 women surveyed, those who regularly took acetaminophen or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) – and had no previous history of high blood pressure – had a significantly elevated risk of becoming hypertensive. For example, women who took NSAIDs for 22 or more days per month increased their risk by 86…
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Health
How your heart got where it is
A team of scientists at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine and The Forsyth Institute in Boston believes it has found the answer to how bodily organs are formed. And it’s electrifying. “All living things generate all sorts of electric fields inside themselves,” explains Michael Levin, an assistant professor at the Dental School and a…
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Health
Bacterial construct makes for elegant vaccine
Investigators from Harvard Medical School and London’s Hammersmith Hospital have found a way to use the bacterium Listeria along with Escherichia coli to fight disease instead of causing it. In the November 2001 issue of Gene Therapy, Darren Higgins, Harvard Medical School assistant professor of microbiology, and Hammersmith co-authors report that by modifying E. coli…
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Science & Tech
Genetic sonograms may reduce need for amniocentesis
Radiologist Beryl Benacerraf is a Harvard Medical School clinical professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Benacerraf, a handful of like-minded maternal-fetal ultrasound specialists, and a growing number of older pregnant women believe in clarifying the risk of a genetic abnormality in a fetus by adding a detailed ultrasound known…
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Health
Specific types of exercise can significantly reduce risk of heart disease among men
A pool of 44,452 men from the Health Professionals’ Follow-Up Study were monitored via questionnaire every two years from 1986 to 1998 to determine potential coronary heart disease risk factors and type and intensity of leisure time activity. While studies have been conducted on the beneficial relationship of exercise and risk of CHD, there is…
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Health
AIDS vaccine trials underway
A new AIDS vaccine is being tested in Boston, according to senior investigator Clyde Crumpacker, infectious disease specialist in the Virology Research Clinic at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School’s Division of AIDS. The study, which will include a total of 160 participants at 10 sites throughout…
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Health
Protector protein part of nerve cell defense
Heat shock proteins are known to protect all cell types from various general assaults. They were originally discovered when cultured cells that were heated expressed the proteins at high levels and proved more resistant to other injuries and toxins. They help fold proteins that are misfolded in times of crisis, help maintain structural integrity of…
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Health
Hormone receptor variation linked to cancer risk
Endometrial cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women in this country, according to National Cancer Institute statistics. Progesterone’s important protective role showed up three decades ago, articulated in the unopposed estrogen theory. In the early 1970s, researchers documented that a woman on unopposed estrogen replacement therapy had a 10 times higher chance of…