Featured series 
Tag: Work in Progress
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Science & Tech
Strong student support found for war
American college students strongly support U.S. war objectives in Afghanistan aimed against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist network, according to a survey conducted by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The survey was released in early November 2001. Support among undergraduates for air strikes…
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Science & Tech
Anthrax expert Matthew Meselson speaks out
In 1992-93, Harvard Professor Matthew Meselson investigated the largest known outbreak of inhalation anthrax in history, which occurred in the Soviet Union in 1979. The anthrax was accidentally released from a Russian military facility. Meselson and his co-researchers documented the deaths of 66 people, and found 11 who survived. In the wake of cases of…
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Health
WHO report reviews world mental health care
Since the mid-1970s, World Health Organization policies have encouraged integrating mental health services into primary care settings. But no one knows what, if anything, might be working to help those who are suffering, says the author of a report reviewing mental health services — or rather, the lack of them — in developing countries. Alex…
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Health
How does the brain reinvent itself?
In order for us to use our minds for memory, for learning, and so forth, our brains must continually reinvent themselves. How do they do it? A Harvard Medical School research team has looked at the complicated interactions within nerve cells of ion channels, peptide hormones, growth factors, and a host of regulatory proteins and…
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Health
Anthrax toxin receptor discovered
The first point of contact between anthrax toxin that invades the body and the cells that the toxin will eventually destroy is a protein, known as a “docking” protein or receptor. This docking protein was recently discovered by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of Wisconsin Medical School. Their discovery will, they hope,…
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Health
Cognition unaffected by marijuana use
Harrison Pope, a Harvard professor of psychiatry, and his colleagues at McLean Hospital, a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric facility in Belmont, Mass., investigated the long-term cognitive effects of smoking marijuana. They recruited 180 people, who ranged from light to heavy users. Heavy use was defined as smoking pot at least 5,000 times. All the research subjects took…
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Science & Tech
Drug patents not crucial in AIDS fight, researchers find
About 25 million people are infected with AIDS in Africa and just 25,000, or one in 1,000, are receiving antiretroviral drug treatment. Patents for anti-AIDS drugs have come under fire repeatedly in recent years, with activists charging that the patents keep drug prices high and block manufacture of cheaper generic alternatives that could save lives.…
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Health
Cardiovascular risks seen from marathon running
Researchers analyzed the blood of marathon runners less than 24 hours after they had finished a race. They found abnormally high levels of inflammatory and clotting factors of the kind that are known to set the stage for heart attacks. “My concern is for people who exercise thinking ‘more is better,’ and that marathon running…
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Health
Anthrax immunity gene found in mice
Anthrax is an often fatal disease that is caused by a bacterium. It has been considered a prime biological weapon in the arsenal of terrorists since attacks in the United States in October 2001 and reports elsewhere of anthrax spores being sent through the mail. Harvard Medical School researchers have identified a gene in mice…
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Health
A strategy to neutralize anthrax toxin in the body
A Harvard Medical School research team has developed a strategy to neutralize anthrax toxin in the body. So far they have tried the treatment in rats. Normally, rats die within hours after being injected with anthrax toxin. But when the toxin was followed minutes later with an injection of an inhibiting agent known as a…
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Science & Tech
New use found for black silicon
In 1999, Harvard researchers used laser pulses to etch the surface of silicon, the most common substance used in electronic devices. By accident, they created a material that efficiently traps light. Called black silicon, it holds amazing potential for efficiently converting sunlight to electricity, for communicating by light, and for monitoring the environment for evidence…
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Health
Researchers identify genes that trigger depression
A substance known as CREB controls gene expression in the brain. It also appears to be active in mood disorders. A group of Harvard researchers at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., have developed methods that allowed them to selectively activate or deactivate CREB in the brains of rats. They found that activation of CREB in…
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Science & Tech
Student investigates investing in Mother Earth
Managers of “green” mutual investment funds seek to invest their clients’ money in socially responsible and environmentally friendly companies. But those managers, and individual investors, are often hampered by a lack of information about a company’s effect on the environment. While an index such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory contains a lot…
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Health
Study shows strong public interest in genetic testing for Alzheimer’s disease
A genetic test to determine a person’s chance of getting Alzheimer’s disease is still hypothetical. But scientists are getting closer and closer to being able to determine who is likely to get the disease. A study by Harvard researchers and their colleagues found that, once such a genetic test is developed, approximately 80 percent of…
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Health
One-tenth of medical residents feel unprepared
Findings from a study suggest that gaps exist in the preparedness of physicians to manage the full range of patients, procedures and problems they may encounter. A surprising one in 10 of medical residents said they felt unprepared to deal with such tasks as the treatment of HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, nursing home patients, management of…
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Science & Tech
Medicaid coverage for anti-AIDS drugs would be cost effective
It’s long been said that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” A new study from the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis applies the principle to treating HIV-infected people with antiretroviral drugs, the so-called “AIDS cocktail.” Under Medicare rules, people without health insurance can’t get treatment until they develop full-blown AIDS and…
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Health
Sorting good eggs from bad ones
An oocyte is an immature egg cell in the ovaries. Before a woman is born, her ovaries will contain about five million eggs. At birth, about three million of those egg cells die — apparently by committing suicide. This fact of nature has long puzzled scientists. Now, Harvard researchers working at the Center for Blood…
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Health
Cell death in eggs traced to smoking
A woman is born with just so many egg cells, called oocytes. When she begins ovulating, she has about 400. Even though that may seem like a lot, considering the few that would ever be fertilized, scientists have found that loss of oocytes influences a woman’s health. Early loss of oocytes leads to early menopause…
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Health
Common aspirin reveals mechanism of insulin resistance
In 1876, a German professor described a treatment that led to rapid improvement in two men who were suffering from what doctors now recognize as classic type 2 diabetes. In the late 1950s, scattered reports about this treatment for diabetes symptoms again appeared in the medical literature; the results were equally dramatic. What was this…
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Health
Resistance to antibodies is reversed
It’s a frightening — and increasingly common — problem. A patient seeks treatment for a particular ailment in a hospital and develops an entirely different disease: a bacterial infection that is resistant to antibiotics. Researchers have worked to come up with better and more powerful antibiotics, but even an antibiotic such as vancomycin, which used…
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Health
Researchers discover new type of cancer
A team led by a Harvard researcher has identified a new type of cancer that primarily affects young girls. Sara Vargas, an instructor in pathology at Harvard Medical School and a researcher in the Department of Pathology at Children’s Hospital in Boston, led the study that identified the new syndrome. The cancer is characterized by…
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Health
Harvard scientists identify chromosome location of genes associated with long life
Scientists have long thought of aging as a complex process affected by perhaps a thousand genes. So a recent discovery by Harvard scientists that a gene or genes located on a region of human Chromosome 4 may help people to live to age 100 was something of a surprise. “This is the first study to…
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Science & Tech
U.S. stepped aside during Rwandan genocide
Samantha Power, executive director of the John F. Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, conducted a three-year-long investigation into what the United States government knew, didn’t know, and chose to do during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Based on hundreds of interviews and hundreds of pages of declassified government documents, Power’s conclusion finds…
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Health
Nutrition book author Willett rebuilds USDA food pyramid
For more than 20 years researchers at Harvard and elsewhere have been looking at the long-term health effects of eating certain types of foods. These researchers now have a good idea what’s good for you and what’s not, and in what quantities. However, that information is not reflected in the “food pyramid” produced by the…
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Health
Drug hits new molecular target in mice
When doctors diagnose and plan treatment for breast cancers they look for various indicators of how aggressive they are and what treatments will work best. Two-thirds of breast tumors are made up of cells that have receptor molecules for estrogen on their cell surface. The growth of these estrogen-receptor-positive (ER+) tumors depends in part on…
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Health
Study shows obesity can increase risk of pancreatic cancer
Each year almost 30,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. About the same number of people are killed by it. Pancreatic cancer is the fifth-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S. A study by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Dana-Farber…
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Science & Tech
Harvard undergraduate discovers novel atomic cluster
Eighteen-year-old Kevin Chan, a member of the Harvard College Class of 2004, used a supercomputer to discover a novel arrangement of atoms that had been missed by other scientists studying such clusters. Chan made the unexpected discovery in late June 2001 while working on a summer project at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC). Chan,…
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Science & Tech
Why antimatter matters so much
In 1995, experimenters made nine or 10 atoms of antihydrogen at the Center for European Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland. Since then, researchers have sought a method for making more antimatter, which would allow them to test fundamental theories of the universe. A team led by Gerald Gabrielse, Harvard professor of physics, is close to…
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Health
Snack foods may increase risk of age-related sight loss
Macular degeneration results from the malfunctioning or loss of function of photo-sensitive cells in the retina. According to the Macular Degeneration Foundation, more than 13 million people in the United States are affected; a new case of adult macular degeneration is diagnosed in the U.S. every three minutes. A study in the August 2001 issue…