All articles


  • Science & Tech

    Implantable chips bear promise, but privacy standards needed

    Writing in the July 28, 2005 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, John Halamka, M.D., chief information officer at BIDMC and Harvard Medical School and an emergency room physician, says the chip implanted in his arm would allow anyone with a handheld reader to scan his arm and obtain his 16-digit medical identifier.…

  • Campus & Community

    Blood vessel drugs halt cancer growth

    Nobody believed Judah Folkman when, in the 1960s, he claimed that the growth of cancers could be stopped, even reversed, by blocking the tiny vessels that feed them blood. Over the years, however, he has survived peer rejection of his theory, and gone on to develop drugs that did what he predicted they would do.

  • Campus & Community

    Jay Light named acting dean of Harvard Business School

    Jay O. Light, the Dwight P. Robinson, Jr., Professor of Business Administration, has agreed to serve as Acting Dean of Harvard Business School starting August 1, President Lawrence H. Summers announced June 30, 2005.

  • Campus & Community

    College Horizons introduces Native American teens to college admissions

    From 42 Native nations, high school students learn the ropes at Harvard

  • Campus & Community

    Vietnamese prime minister visits Harvard

    Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Phan Van Khai visited Harvard University today (June 24) to talk about higher education in his country. Khai met privately with Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers this morning and briefly visited the John Harvard Statue in Harvard Yard. In the afternoon, Khai participated in a panel presentation…

  • Campus & Community

    Evelynn Hammonds named senior vice provost for Faculty Development and Diversity

    Evelynn Hammonds, professor of the history of science and of African and African American Studies, has been named senior vice provost for Faculty Development and Diversity at Harvard University, Provost Steven E. Hyman announced today (July 20).

  • Campus & Community

    Four Harvard Medical School researchers part of $300 million NIH center for HIV research consortium

    Four Harvard Medical School (HMS) faculty will serve in leadership roles within the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI), a consortium of universities and academic medical centers established today (July 14) by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAD). The center’s goal will be to solve major problems in HIV vaccine development and…

  • Campus & Community

    In brief

    HMNH seeks ‘gallery guides’ The Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH) seeks volunteers who wish to share their enthusiasm for natural history with museum visitors of all ages. The museum seeks “gallery guides” who are able to commit one morning or afternoon per weekend. For information, call Dominique Rampton at (617) 384-7180 or e-mail drampton@oeb.harvard.edu.

  • Campus & Community

    Newsmakers

    Postdoc named Runyon Fellow The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation named Yifeng Zhang, postdoctoral fellow in molecular and cellular biology, one of its 10 postdoctoral fellowship recipients at its May scientific advisory committee review. According to the foundation, these fellowships are awarded to “outstanding young scientists conducting theoretical and experimental research that is relevant to…

  • Campus & Community

    Women’s Health Study: Long-awaited findings of low-dose aspirin and vitamin E in preventing disease

    The Women’s Health Study (WHS) – the largest randomized clinical trial to investigate the impact of aspirin and vitamin E on the primary prevention of cardiovascular and cancer risk – has helped shape some of clinical medicine’s basic understanding of disease prevention and women’s health. Now, researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), where the…

  • Campus & Community

    Sports in brief

    Corriero nominated for ESPY Harvard’s Nicole Corriero ’05, the ECAC Hockey League and Ivy League Player of the Year, was recently nominated for an ESPY Award by ESPN in the category of Best Female College Athlete. Corriero joined Louisiana State University basketball star Simone Augustus; University of California, Los Angeles, gymnast Kristen Maloney; Notre Dame…

  • Campus & Community

    Good luck charm?

    President Lawrence H. Summers throws out the first pitch at Fenway Park on July 15 the Red Sox went on to defeat the New York Yankees that evening, 17-1. (Staff photo Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office)

  • Campus & Community

    Martin appointed FAS diversity adviser

    Dean of Harvards Faculty of Arts and Sciences William C. Kirby announced on July 13 that Lisa Martin, Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs in the Department of Government, has been appointed senior adviser to the dean, with responsibility for advising him, the divisional deans, and the Faculty as a whole on matters related to…

  • Campus & Community

    Pulitzer Prize winner, noted economists named KSG professors

    Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power and economists Jeffrey Liebman and Alberto Abadie have been named professors at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG).

  • Campus & Community

    James J. Healy, Harvard Business School professor and prominent labor arbitrator, dead at 88

    James J. Healy, the John G. McLean Professor of Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard Business School (HBS), died at his home in Phoenix, Ariz., on June 6 at the age of 88. A member of the Harvard University and HBS faculties for more than four decades, he was a leading authority on labor relations as…

  • Campus & Community

    A bevy of unknown beauties

    Walking up the ramp of the Carpenter Center, Julie Buck smiles as she sees a poster of a pretty, dark-haired woman in a white, one-piece bathing suit lying on a red leather recliner with a color test strip balanced on her bare thigh.

  • Campus & Community

    HUAM acquires prominent Fluxus collection

    The Harvard University Art Museums (HUAM) earlier this month announced its acquisition of the Barbara and Peter Moore Fluxus Collection, one of the most important groups of Fluxus materials in North America. The acquisition is a partial gift from Barbara Moore, and a partial purchase made through the museums Margaret Fisher Fund.

  • Campus & Community

    Marilyn Dunn named Schlesinger Library executive director and Radcliffe Institute librarian

    The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study has announced the appointment of Marilyn Dunn as the new executive director of the library and Radcliffe Institute librarian. She will assume her duties on July 18. Currently the college librarian and director of information…

  • Campus & Community

    Spiritual renewal

    The Memorial Church undergoes top-to-bottom renovations this summer, including new slates for the 73-year-old roof, insulation for the attic, and state-of-the-art heating, cooling, and ventilation systems. The church will reopen for Freshman Sunday, Sept. 11. (Staff photo Jon Chase/Harvard News Office)

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard authors receive CASE research award

    Professor of Higher Education Richard Chait and William Ryan, research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University, have been named recipients of the Council for Advancement and Support of Educations (CASE) 2005 Research Writing Awards. These awards recognize outstanding research and writing in the educational advancement disciplines of alumni relations, communications,…

  • Campus & Community

    CAPS announces fellowship winners

    Harvards Center for American Political Studies (CAPS) has announced the winners of its graduate and undergraduate student fellowships. These fellowships help to foster innovative research on American politics, spanning from the Civil War to the present. Deadlines for the fellowships are in early spring.

  • Campus & Community

    New route to cell death found

    Damaged or unusable cells in our bodies will commit suicide to protect us from harm. That’s a well-known process with the awkward name of “apoptosis.” There’s also necrosis, meaning “to make dead,” when brain, heart, and other cells die from disease and trauma. These suicides and uncontrolled deaths have always been thought of as separate…

  • Campus & Community

    Risk of sudden cardiac death is highest in the early period following a heart attack

    Even with modern medical treatment, patients who have experienced a heart attack remain at increased risk for sudden death after they are discharged from the hospital. In an effort to better understand who to treat and when, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), in collaboration with an international research team, studied sudden death in…

  • Campus & Community

    Study: Predatory dinosaurs had birdlike pulmonary system

    What could the fierce dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex and a modern songbird such as the sparrow possibly have in common? Their pulmonary systems may have been more similar than scientists previously thought, according to new research from Harvard University and Ohio University. Though some scientists have proposed that predatory dinosaurs had lungs similar to crocodiles and…

  • Health

    Study identifies fat-secreted protein linked to insulin resistance

    According to senior author Barbara B. Kahn, M.D., chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at BIDMC, these findings in mice and humans show that elevated levels of retinol-binding protein 4 (RBP4) contribute to insulin resistance, a primary risk factor for diabetes. Produced by the pancreas, insulin helps cells take in glucose and…

  • Health

    Home from the hospital: almost half of patients are discharged with test results still pending

    According to Christopher Roy, M.D., a hospitalist at BWH who studies patient safety, “We found that while approximately half of the patients in this study had test results that were unavailable at discharge, only a very small percentage of pending results impacted the patient’s care plan.” The researchers followed 2,644 consecutive, discharged patients from two…

  • Health

    Molecular middleman puts thyroid hormone in developmental signaling pathway

    Tissues such as muscle and brain convert the inactive form of thyroid hormone, T4, into T3, the active form of thyroid hormone, when necessary. In the 1980s, researchers discovered that this conversion is accomplished by the deiodinase enzymes. Several years ago, Antonio Bianco, Harvard Medical School associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital,…

  • Health

    Bacterium proves essential to immune system development

    In the July 15, 2005 Cell, a team led by Dennis Kasper, the William Ellery Channing Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and Sarkis Mazmanian, HMS instructor in microbiology and molecular genetics, both at the Channing laboratory, reports that Bacteriodes fragilis…

  • Health

    Study shows new compound may reduce risk of vision loss in patients with diabetes

    The PKC-Diabetic Retinopathy Study (DRS) was designed to evaluate the safety and effect of an oral treatment, RBX, on retinopathy progression or visual loss in patients with moderately severe to very severe nonproliferative diabetic retinopathy. In the study, patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes received either RBX or a placebo over three to…

  • Health

    Subtle changes in normal genes implicated in breast cancer

    Scientists found that benign cells surrounding breast cancers undergo epigenetic modifications. The altered gene function causes the microenvironment cells to signal proliferation and increased aggression in the breast tumor cells. Kornelia Polyak, M.D., Ph.D., is senior author of the paper, which was posted as an advance online publication on the Nature Genetics Web site. Min…