All stories

Passage of time reduces smoking mortality risk for women who quit

404132862 — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:24:54 -0400

Women who quit smoking significantly reduce their risk of
death from coronary heart disease within 5 years and have about a 20
percent lower risk of death from smoking-related cancers within that
time period, according to a study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH).

Harvard researchers selected for National Academy of Sciences membership

yvette — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:39:20 -0400

Eight Harvard faculty members this week were elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Molecular analysis confirms T. Rex's evolutionary link to birds

yvette — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:25:39 -0400

Putting more meat on the theory that dinosaurs' closest living relatives are modern-day birds, molecular analysis of a shred of 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex protein -- along with that of 21 modern species -- confirms that dinosaurs share common ancestry with chickens, ostriches, and to a lesser extent, alligators.

Policy can empower technological climate change solution

404132862 — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:12:00 -0400

The chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming struck an optimistic tone about the planet’s climate crisis last night, saying that an energy revolution is in the offing if government can just get the policy right.

Life expectancy stagnating, worsening, for large segment of U.S. population

yvette — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:20:41 -0400

A new, long-term study of mortality trends in U.S. counties from 1960 to 2000 finds that an overall average life expectancy increase of 6.5 years for men and women is not reaching many parts of the country. Instead, the life expectancy of a significant segment of the population is actually declining or at best stagnating.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the University of Washington found that 4% of the male population and 19% of the female population experienced either decline or stagnation in mortality beginning in the 1980s.

Elevated urate levels may slow progression of Parkinson's disease

404132862 — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:22:55 -0400

Naturally elevated levels of the antioxidant urate may slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease in men. Researchers from the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease (MGH-MIND) and Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) examined data from an earlier study and found that, among recently diagnosed Parkinson’s patients, those with the highest urate levels had a significantly slower rate of disease progression during the two-year study period. The report appears in the online edition of read more

Reprogrammed adult skin cells treat Parkinson's disease in animal model

404132862 — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:01:23 -0400

Researchers at the Whitehead Institute and Harvard Stem Cell Institute(HSCI) have reported successfully reducing symptoms in a Parkinson's disease rat model by using dopamine producing neurons derived from reprogrammed adult skin cells(iPS).

The work was reported in a study published in the online Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

A Genetic Cause for Iron Deficiency

yvette — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:07:01 -0400

The discovery of a gene for a rare form of inherited iron deficiency may provide clues to iron deficiency in the general population – particularly iron deficiency that doesn’t respond to iron supplements. The finding was published online by the journal Nature Genetics on April 13.

Suboptimal sleep, TV watching correlate with overweight in infants and toddlers

404132862 — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:25:02 -0400

Infants and toddlers who sleep less than 12 hours a day are twice as likely to become overweight by age 3 than children who sleep longer. In addition, high levels of television viewing combined with less sleep elevate the risk, so that children who sleep less than 12 hours and who view two or more hours of television per day have a 16 percent chance of becoming overweight by age 3.

Jeremy Knowles, eminent chemist, Harvard leader, 72

404132862 — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:32:05 -0400

Jeremy R. Knowles, an eminent chemist and longtime leader of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, died April 3 at his home in Cambridge, after a struggle with cancer.

Louise Ivers: 'I can’t sleep at night because of the things that I see.'

404132862 — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:27:17 -0400

Louise Ivers gently lifted the 7-month-old by his forearms, hoping he would pull himself up as a healthy child a third his age might.

But his head hung limply back, eyes wide, upper body slack.

At 7 months, when a healthy child would be sitting up on his own and thinking about crawling, this baby boy was unable to control his head, unable to pull himself from the sheets. Gently, she laid him back.

Laser precision added to search for new Earths

404132862 — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:46:48 -0400

Harvard scientists have unveiled a new laser-measuring device that they say will provide a critical advance in the resolution of current planet-finding techniques, making the discovery of Earth-sized planets possible.

The discovery of planets outside of our solar system, called “exoplanets,” is one of the hottest fields in astronomy and holds great promise to increase our understanding of Earth’s solar system and of how life first took hold on this planet.

Newly discovered class of mouse retinal cells detect upward motion

404132862 — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:10:06 -0400

Harvard researchers have discovered a previously unknown type of retinal cell that plays an exclusive and unusual role in mice: detecting upward motion. The cells reflect their function in the physical arrangement of their dendrites, branch-like structures on neuronal cells that form a communicative network with other dendrites and neurons in the brain.

The work, led by neuroscientists Joshua R. Sanes and Markus Meister, is described in a letter in the journal Nature.

Common aquatic animals show extreme resistance to radiation

404132862 — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:39:40 -0400

Harvard scientists have found that a common class of freshwater invertebrate animals called bdelloid rotifers are extraordinarily resistant to ionizing radiation, surviving and continuing to reproduce after doses of gamma radiation much greater than that tolerated by any other animal species studied to date.

Harvard Medical School to reduce student debt burden

404132862 — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:44:11 -0400

Harvard Medical School (HMS) Dean Jeffrey Flier today announced that the school is taking steps to reduce the cost of a four-year medical education by an average of $50,000 for families with incomes of $120,000 or less.

Stem cells open window on disease processes

404132862 — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:54:34 -0400

A panel of Harvard Stem Cell Institute experts said recently that stem cell research’s biggest impact on patients’ health likely won’t come from therapies that inject stem cells or implant tissues made from them, but rather from the knowledge gained by examining diseased tissues grown from the cells.

Initial human trial of Type 1 diabetes treatment begun

404132862 — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:11:30 -0400

Scientists at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have initiated a phase 1 clinical trial to reverse type 1 diabetes. The trial is exploring whether the promising results from the laboratory of Denise Faustman, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, can be applied in human diabetes.

Inhaled tuberculosis vaccine may be more effective than injected vaccine

404132862 — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:58:18 -0400

A novel aerosol version of the most common tuberculosis (TB) vaccine, administered directly to the lungs as an oral mist, offers significantly better protection against the disease in experimental animals than a comparable dose of the traditional injected vaccine, researchers report this week (March 12) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

President Faust testifies for increase in NIH funding

404132862 — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:02:07 -0400

With the careers of a generation of young researchers threatened by five years of flat National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, Harvard President Drew Faust and leaders of six other major research institutions were in Washington today (March 11) calling on Congress to repair the “Broken Pipeline” through which breakthroughs in the biomedical sciences should be flowing.

"...An important experiment for Harvard."

404132862 — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:49:06 -0400

When the Harvard University Science and Engineering Committee (HUSEC) gathered for its first meeting late last April, it was charged by not one, but two Harvard Presidents.

Then President-designate and now President Drew Faust told the 18 members of the new committee that theirs is both a unique and “historic” body, created to forge meaningful scientific collaborations across the individual disciplines and schools of a University long-known for the independence of its departments and schools.