HarvardScience (BREAKING_NEWS)

Hansjorg Wyss gives $125 million to create institute for biologically inspired engineering

404132862 — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:48:09 -0400

Engineer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss MBA ’65 has given Harvard University $125 million to create the Hansjörg Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

Investigators at the Wyss Institute (pronounced “Vees”) will strive to uncover the engineering principles that govern living things, and use this knowledge to develop technology solutions for the most pressing healthcare and environmental issues facing humanity. Wyss’ gift is the largest individual gift in the University’s history.

Smoking and solid-fuel-burning in homes in China projected to cause millions of deaths

404132862 — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:20:51 -0400

The pine beetle's tale

404132862 — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:34:01 -0400

Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have discovered how beetles and bacteria form a symbiotic and mutualistic relationship — one that ultimately results in the destruction of pine forests. In addition, they’ve identified the specific molecule that drives this whole phenomenon.

Global warming threatens his nation's existence, a president warns

404132862 — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:55:55 -0400

During a talk at Harvard, the leader of the South Pacific island nation of Kiribati laid out an extraordinary plan that would scatter his people through the nations of the world as rising sea levels submerge the islands they have called home for centuries.

Harvard Forest:

404132862 — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:14:06 -0400

Harvard may be rooted in Cambridge, but it has a lot more roots in the small north-central Massachusetts town of Petersham.

That's where you'll find the woods, streams, and fields of the Harvard Forest, a 3,500-acre research and teaching facility that's been part of the University for more than a century. Having been closely monitored since 1907 — and with a provenance dating to a Colonial farm established in the mid 1700s — the history of this tract is likely better-documented than that of any other forest in the United States.

Important new step toward producing stem cells for human treatment

404132862 — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:15:13 -0400

A team of Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) scientists has taken an important step toward producing induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that are safe to transplant into patients to treat diseases.

Excitement over the ability of researchers to create this form of stem cell by inserting four genes into adults cells has thus far been tempered by the fact that the genes have been inserted using retroviruses, which have the potential to turn on cancer genes and trigger tumor growth.

Three Harvard faculty members net MacArthur fellowships

404132862 — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:28:21 -0400

Three biologists — one current and two future faculty members at Harvard — have won MacArthur Foundation “genius” grants, $500,000 no-strings-attached awards intended to encourage creativity, originality, and innovation in a broad array of fields.

Stem Cell Summit hails bench progress, looks to bedside future

404132862 — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:31:13 -0400

New discoveries concerning cell reprogramming over the past year have boosted stem cell researchers in the lab and encouraged efforts to transfer test tube and lab animal advances to humans suffering degenerative diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Leaders of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) and Harvard President Drew Faust hailed advances in the last year as significant steps in the drive to understand and one day treat these diseases, which afflict millions around the world.

NIH names Harvard Pioneers, Innovators

404132862 — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:25:41 -0400

Harvard faculty members comprise almost 20 percent of the 47 scientists nationally whose promising and innovative work was today recognized with the announcement of two grant programs through the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The grants, expected to total $138 million over five years for all recipients, recognize established researchers through the Pioneer Award and young scientists through the New Innovator Award.

The awards support potentially high-impact research whose approaches have the potential to transform biomedical and behavioral science.

New class of hormone from “healthy fat cells” benefits body metabolism in mice

404132862 — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:12:20 -0400

Scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have identified in mice a newly discovered class of hormones -- lipokines. In tomorrow's issue of the journal Cell they report that lipokine is a molecule in mice that helps stop, or even reverses obesity-related conditions such as insulin resistance and “fatty liver.”

Lipokines are hormones made from lipids, or fats. All other known hormones – chemical signals secreted into the blood that regulate distant cells and organs – are steroid or protein-based.

David Korn named University's vice provost for research;

404132862 — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:37:37 -0400

David Korn, a former Dean of Stanford University School of Medicine long known as a leader in research policy and science administration, will become the University's vice provost for research, Provost Steven E. Hyman today announced.

A distinguished pathologist who was at Stanford for more than a decade, Korn has served since 1997 in senior roles at the Association of American Medical Colleges, where he is now the chief scientific officer.

Harvard Medical School, MGH researcher Gary Ruvkun to share 2008 Lasker Award

404132862 — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 19:06:07 -0400

Gary Ruvkun, a Harvard Medical School genetics professor in the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Computational and Integrative Biology, is one of three scientists named co-recipients of the 2008 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research.

ATLAS detector seeks to illuminate universe’s mysteries

404132862 — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:37:28 -0400

Scientists at Harvard and around the world held their breath earlier today, as colleagues switched on the most powerful particle accelerator ever built, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the particle physics laboratory in Geneva.

Efficiency of producing iPS cells markedly improved

404132862 — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:55:30 -0400

Some of the most challenging obstacles limiting the reprogramming of mature human cells into stem cells may not seem quite as daunting in the near future. Two independent research groups, one lead by Harvard Stem Cell Institute Principal Faculty member Konrad Hochedlinger, and another at the Whitehead Institute, are describing new tools that provide invaluable platforms for elucidating the molecular, genetic and biochemical mechanisms associated with reprogramming.

Advanced blood analysis may speed diagnosis of heart attacks

404132862 — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:07:22 -0400

Someday doctors may be able to use a blood test to confirm within minutes, instead of hours, if a patient is having a heart attack, allowing more rapid treatment that could limit damage to heart muscle. A study led by investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT reports that a new technique that measures hundreds of molecular markers in the blood can identify those released when cardiac tissue is injured by a lack of oxygen. The report will appear in the October Journal of Clinical Investigation and has received early online release.

Harvard Catalyst is up and running

404132862 — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:42:01 -0400

The Harvard Catalyst, an unprecedented pan-University collaborative effort committed to harnessing the human, technological, and fiscal resources of Harvard and its academic healthcare centers (AHCs) to reduce the burden of human illness has launched a feature-rich website that focuses its collaborative efforts.

Broad Institute awarded $86 million NIH grant

404132862 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:15:02 -0400

Researchers at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT have been chosen to receive a six-year, $86M grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to identify and develop molecular tools known as “small molecules," which can probe the proteins, signaling pathways and cellular processes that are crucial to human health and disease.

Value of direct-to-consumer drug advertising oversold, study finds

404132862 — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:00:58 -0400

Direct-to-consumer advertising may not be giving big pharma such a big bang for their five billion bucks after all. Despite the billions spent on bringing drug marketing campaigns straight into patients’ living rooms, such strategies have a modest effect at best—and in some cases, no effect at all.

“People tend to think that if direct-to-consumer advertising wasn’t effective, pharma wouldn’t be doing it,” says Harvard Medical School professor Stephen Soumerai, principal investigator on the study. “But as it turns out, decisions to market directly to consumers is based on scant data.”

Jamaican lizards mark their territory with shows of strength at dusk and dawn

404132862 — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:40:48 -0400

What does ageless fitness guru Jack LaLanne have in common with a Jamaican lizard?

Like LaLanne, the lizards greet each day with vigorous push-ups. That's according to a new study showing that male Anolis lizards engage in impressive displays of reptilian strength - push-ups, head bobs, and threatening extension of a colorful neck flap called a dewlap -- to defend their territory at dawn and dusk.

The lizards are the first animals known to mark dawn and dusk through visual displays, rather than the much better known chirping, tweeting, and other sounding off by birds, frogs, geckos, and primates.

Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers turn one form of adult mouse cell directly into another

404132862 — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:40:13 -0400

In a feat of biological prestidigitation likely to turn the field of regenerative medicine on its head, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) co-director Doug Melton and post doctoral fellow Qiao "Joe" Zhou report having achieved what has long been a dream and ultimate goal of developmental biologists – directly turning one type of fully formed adult cell into another type of adult cell.