News Archive 2010
Stories published before July 30, 2010
Humor, laughter, and those aha moments
July 28, 2010 – Presented with a joke, the brain seeks to find the story’s pattern, resolve incongruity, and make sense of shifting expectations. Then: laughter!
Harvard Medical School Dean accepts recommendations for revising conflicts of interest policy
July 21, 2010 – Following more than one year of rigorous discussion and deliberation, the Harvard University Faculty of Medicine Committee on Conflicts of Interest and Commitment has presented Dean Jeffrey S. Flier with a series of recommendations to revise and clarify the existing Policy on Conflicts of Interest and Commitment (COI policy). Dean Flier, who convened the committee in January 2009, has carefully reviewed and accepted the committee’s recommendations, which over the next year will be formally incorporated into the HMS COI policy.
Healthy dividing cells spontaneously trigger tumor suppressor, study shows (Includes video)
July 20, 2010 – Researchers report that a protein better known as the most important protection against cancer has a surprisingly dynamic life in healthy cells.
Living, breathing human lung-on-a-chip: A potential drug-testing alternative (Includes video)
June 24, 2010 – Researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have combined microfabrication techniques from the computer industry with modern tissue engineering techniques, human cells and a plain old vacuum pump to create a living, breathing human lung-on-a-chip. The device mimics the most active part of the lung, the boundary between the air sac and the bloodstream.
Researchers create self-assembling nanodevices that move and change shape on demand
June 21, 2010 – By emulating nature’s design principles, researchers have created nanodevices made of DNA that self-assemble and can be programmed to move and change shape.
Gut-residing bacteria trigger arthritis in genetically-susceptible individuals
June 17, 2010 – Using a mouse model, researchers demonstrated a link between normally occurring bacteria in the gut and arthritis. The bacteria spur immune cells to release arthritis-causing “autoantibodies” into the blood.
Medicare cuts increase cancer treatments, study finds
June 17, 2010 – The 2005 Medicare Modernization Act, which substantially reduced Medicare payments to physicians for administering outpatient chemotherapy drugs, has paradoxically increased, rather than decreased, chemotherapy treatment rates among Medicare recipients.
Enough Time to Change the World
May 27, 2010 – Eric Lander offers the graduating class a blueprint for revolutionary
change in medicine.
Joan Miller receives 2010 Leadership Award for the Advancement of Women Faculty
May 27, 2010 – Joan W. Miller, the HMS Henry Willard Williams Professor of Ophthalmology
and chair of the department of ophthalmology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary
(MEEI), has been awarded the 2010 Joseph B. Martin Dean’s Leadership Award for
the Advancement of Women Faculty.
Neanderthal genome tells a human story
May 6, 2010 – A preliminary draft of the Neanderthal genome reveals that people of European and Asian decent can attribute roughly 4 percent of their DNA to these ancient ancestors.
Study takes first systematic look at impact of international health aid
April 15, 2010 – Low-income countries have doubled their spending on health overall, reports a major new study over 12 years ending in 2006, but international health aid may not be adding as much as expected to the health budgets of some of these countries.
Structure of inner-ear protein is key to both hearing and inherited deafness (Includes video)
April 14, 2010 – Using a combination of crystallization and physics-based simulations, researchers defined the structure of a protein, cadherin-23, that helps mediate our perception of sound.
Newly discovered RNA steers brain development
April 14, 2010 – A newly discovered class of RNA molecules helps elucidate how a person’s external experiences turn on the genes that shape the connections among cells that make up the human brain.
HMS Researchers Lead $15 Million Federal Research Grant to Support Advancement of Health Information Technology
April 8, 2010 – The four-year project will be led by Isaac Kohane and Kenneth Mandl of the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program and HMS, and will investigate, evaluate, and prototype approaches to achieving an “iPhone-like” health information technology platform model.
Loss of enzyme reduces neural activity in Angelman Syndrome
March 4, 2010 – Researchers have now found that the gene mutation underlying Angelman Syndrome appears to affect the ability of neurons to communicate and to properly develop during the first few years of life, a time when brain activity is rewired by external stimuli.
Scientists discover how ocean bacterium turns carbon into fuel (Includes video)
March 4, 2010 – Pamela Silver and her colleagues have uncovered details about how cyanobacteria, one of the most abundant organisms on earth, digest carbon.
Childhood obesity prevention should begin early in life, possibly before birth, study finds
March 1, 2010 – Risk factors for childhood obesity may be evident before birth and are more likely to occur in African-American and Hispanic children than in Caucasian children. Researchers studied 1,826 mother-child pairs from pregnancy through the child’s first five years of life.
U.S. birth weights on the decline
January 21, 2010 – A study that analyzed data from 36,827,828 U.S. babies born at full-term between 1990 and 2005 has found that birth weights decreased by up to 79 grams (2.78 ounces) during that time frame. The decreases could not be explained by changes in maternal or neonatal characteristics or trends in obstetric care practices such as cesarean sections or induced delivery.
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