Health

Shelley Carson, a researcher in the Psychology Department and lecturer at the Extension School, has penned a how-to book on harnessing your untapped abilities.

A new study by Harvard School of Public Health researchers shows that adults who regularly take ibuprofen, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, have about one-third less risk of developing Parkinson’s disease than nonusers.

As genetic testing and its offspring — personalized medicine — have matured, patients and doctors have become entangled in such issues as how to best share at-risk information, access treatment options, and weigh decisions about threats to the young and unborn. And sometimes these issues mushroom, becoming quandaries for society as a whole.

Taking advantage of the simple color pattern of deer mice, Harvard researchers showed that small changes in the activity of a single pigmentation gene in embryos generate big differences in adult color pattern.

On a day when Harvard celebrated the accomplishments of the Human Genome Project, the Radcliffe Institute hosted a scientist whose work focuses not just on DNA, but on the mechanisms that control its expression.

A group of Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology has discovered that excitatory neurons control the positioning of inhibitory neurons in the brain in a process critically important for generating balanced circuitry and proper cortical response.

Harvard President Drew Faust hosted a panel discussion on the legacy of the Human Genome Project Feb. 22 at Sanders Theatre.

Ten years before his novel “Lolita,” Vladimir Nabokov published a detailed hypothesis for the origin and evolution of the Polyommatus blues butterflies. A team, led by a Harvard professor, is proving him right.

The Arnold Arboretum’s new director, William “Ned” Friedman, has been intrigued by plants’ structure and origin — and captivated by their beauty — for three decades.

Harvard researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified the root molecular cause of a variety of ills brought on by advanced age, including waning energy, failure of the heart and other organs, and metabolic disorder.

For the first time, researchers have laid bare the full genetic blueprint of multiple prostate tumors, uncovering alterations that have never before been detected and offering a deep view of the genetic missteps that underlie the disease.

A team of Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers, in collaboration with scientists at Columbia University, have demonstrated that many iPS cells (stem cells created by reprogramming adult cells) are the equal of human embryonic stem cells in creating human motor neurons, the cells destroyed in a number of neurological diseases, including Parkinson’s.

International health workers are on the verge of eliminating guinea worm disease from the planet, marking the second time humanity has eliminated a malady that once plagued millions.

It has long been a given that adult humans — and mammals in general — lack the capacity to grow new nephrons, the kidney’s delicate blood filtering tubules, which has meant that dialysis, and ultimately kidney transplantation, is the only option for the more than 450,000 Americans who have kidney failure.

Authorities on malaria from around the world came to Harvard Medical School to participate in a forum discussing a change in strategy in the battle against malaria, moving from control to eradication.

Harvard researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital find that participating in an eight-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy, and stress.

Evolution icon Charles Darwin rushed “On the Origin of Species” into print to beat the competition, but neglected to credit early thinkers on the subject, who let him know it after the book’s 1859 publication, leading to his appended “Historical Sketch” in later editions.

Harvard researchers have estimated the likely cost-effectiveness of post-discharge follow-up phone calls to smokers hospitalized with acute heart attacks. In a report in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the researchers suggest that phone calls to these discharged smokers encouraging them to quit would yield significant health and economic gains.

Harvard researchers in the Children’s Hospital Boston Informatics Program have created a model for predicting a drug’s tendency to cause birth defects.

In the first study to look at the potential for organ donation from dying infants in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) setting, Harvard researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital Boston, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center demonstrated that an estimated 8 percent of NICU mortalities would be eligible for organ donation after cardiac death.

The vitamin D levels of newborn babies appear to predict their risk of respiratory infections during infancy and the occurrence of wheezing during early childhood, but not the risk of developing asthma. Results of a study in the January 2011 issue of Pediatrics support the theory that widespread vitamin D deficiency contributes to risk of infections.

A comparative analysis found wide disparities in the results of four common measures of hospital-wide mortality rates, with competing methods yielding both higher- and lower-than-expected rates for the same Massachusetts hospitals during the same year.

Patients who were knowingly given placebos for irritable bowel syndrome experienced significant symptom relief when compared with controls.

By comparing the DNA of modern elephants from Africa and Asia to DNA extracted from two extinct species, the woolly mammoth and the mastodon, researchers have concluded that Africa has two — not one — species of elephant. Now that we know the forest and savanna elephants are two very different animals, the forest elephant should become a bigger priority for conservation purposes.

People’s ability to recognize and remember faces peaks at ages 30 to 34, about a decade later than most other mental abilities, a new study says.

Scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health and collaborators from other institutions have identified a natural substance in dairy fat that may substantially reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes.

Researchers at Harvard University and Bates College say female chimpanzees appear to treat sticks as dolls, carrying them around until they have offspring of their own. Young males engage in such behavior much less frequently.

Harvard researchers have shed light on how the sense of smell works to induce behavior, linking patterns of electrical spikes in the brain to behavior in laboratory animals.

Harvard School of Public Health researchers are mounting a major study of chronic disease in four African nations, which organizers hope will provide a foundation for understanding and treating chronic ailments like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

The discovery of an unknown 1848 letter by the great naturalist sheds light on a murky part of his life, and on a friendship that eventually went awry.