Focus: Hidden - Massachusetts

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Nursing homes care for increasing numbers of people with dementia, yet many lack access to geriatric psychiatrists, behavioral neurologists and other specialists who can help manage dementia care. Consequently, nursing home staff may resort to physical restraints or antipsychotic medications to manage behavioral challenges. A new study led by BIDMC has found that use of video consultations between nursing home staff and hospital clinical experts was associated with significant reductions in the use of physical restraints and antipsychotic medication among dementia patients.

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A crowd-sourcing strategy aimed at accelerating research into metastatic breast cancer has registered more than 2,000 patients from all 50 states in its first seven months, report researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting.

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The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship (ASF) announced its selections for the 2016 SPARK! Awards. Edward J. Benz, Jr., MD, President and CEO of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, will receive the 2016 Schweitzer Clarion Award for Health Promotion and Education

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The Great American Solar Eclipse, a total solar eclipse that will sweep across the U.S. in August 2017, is already grabbing the attention of scientists like Williams College Professor of Astronomy Jay Pasachoff.

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George L. King, M.D., Chief Scientific Officer at Joslin Diabetes Center and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, has been selected to receive the 2016 JDRF Mary Tyler Moore and S. Robert Levine Excellence in Clinical Research Award.

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Shuchin Aeron, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in Tufts University’s School of Engineering, has received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and U.S. Department of Energy.

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Susan Lynn Meyer has published a second young adult novel, Skating with the Statue of Liberty with Penguin Random House (April 2016), a companion volume to the Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner Black Radishes. In her new book, Gustave, a Jewish refugee boy who has fled Nazi-occupied France, faces racism and anti-Semitism in New York City during World War II, but ultimately finds friendship and hope.

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Babson College Assistant Professor of Media Studies Xinghua Li has released her first book entitled, Environmental Advertising in China and the USA: The Desire to Go Green.

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Babson Professor Richard Mandel has been named Undergraduate Teacher of the Year and Professor Mark Potter the Graduate Faculty of the Year (also known as the Thomas Kennedy Award for Teaching Excellence).

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Mammals have an exquisitely tuned sensory system that tells them whether they are smelling an orange or a rose. Like keys on a piano keyboard, each component of an odor blend strikes only one chord of olfactory neuron activation. These chords are combined to form a melody that is “heard” in the brain as distinctly citrusy or sweet and flowery.

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After eating a meal, you can thank your vagus nerve for sensing and signaling that feeling of fullness to your brain. That same nerve also detects nutrients and controls digestion. The vagus has long been recognized as a remarkable internal sensory system, regulating breathing and heart rate among other functions. Yet how it receives the information it uses to perform these tasks has been less well-known.

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Life sometimes takes an unexpected turn, whether you’re a scientist or a nematode. Take, for example, the curveball thrown to graduate student Candice Yip when she set out to study nerve growth in the head of Caenorhabditis elegans and instead discovered how an abnormal number of sensory neurons share space throughout the tiny worm’s body.

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Six Babson alumni, undergraduate, and graduate student businesses have been named finalists in the 2016 MassChallenge accelerator program. This year’s cohort was chosen from over 1,700 applicants and represent a diverse range of industries and geographies, including nine countries and 16 states.

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Babson College has selected 27 new entrepreneur teams to join the 2016 Summer Venture Program at its Wellesley, Massachusetts and San Francisco, California campuses—a signature initiative of the institution’s Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship.

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Using data from criminal cases of animal abuse, researchers from Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) have demonstrated that motor vehicle accidents and non-accidental blunt force trauma cases in dogs and cats present with different types of injuries. The research, which appears online in advance of the September 2016 print edition of the Journal of Forensic Sciences, can help in the effort to uncover and address animal abuse.

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Babson College Professor Raj Sisodia has co-authored Shakti Leadership: Embracing Feminine and Masculine Power in Business alongside Nilima Bhat, founder of Sampurnah: The Wholeness Practice.

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Researchers are making progress in understanding exactly how sleep helps the brain lay down memories and remove waste products. The findings may have implications for diseases in which sleep and memory are impaired. Alzforum reports.

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Select studies Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers are presenting at the meeting

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MatchMiner, an open computational platform developed at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for matching patient-specific genomic profiles to precision cancer medicine clinical trials, has been named the winner of the Precision Trials Challenge at Harvard Business School.

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Around the world an estimated 20.9 million people are in situations of so-called modern day slavery, or forced labor, at any point of time, according to the new Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime report.

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Twenty-one members of the Class of 2016 will be the first graduates of Tufts University’s Bridge to Liberal Arts Success at Tufts (BLAST), a program to support and develop undergraduates who are the first in their families to attend a four-year college or who have attended under-resourced high schools.

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The 36th annual Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference (BCERC), co-sponsored by Nord University Business School and Nordland Research Institute, in Bodø, Norway, will be held at Nord University Business School on June 8-11, 2016.​

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Bioabsorbable heart valves or blood vessels are designed to harness the body’s innate healing process, enabling the natural restoration of complex body parts as the synthetic graft is absorbed. At the 96th AATS Annual Meeting, surgeons from the Bakoulev Center for Cardiovascular Surgery, Moscow report the results of implantation of bioabsorbable vascular grafts placed into five children born with serious cardiovascular anomalies. According to the investigators, this is the first-ever clinical trial of a bioabsorbable cardiovascular device.

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Researchers from the Schepens Eye Research Institute of Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School have designed three new eyeglasses using high-power prisms to optimally expand the visual fields of patients with hemianopia, a condition in which the visual fields of both eyes are cut by half. The new designs, described in Optometry and Vision Science, address some limitations of existing prism correction available to this population.

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Looking ahead to 2035, a growing disparity is projected between the number of cardiothoracic surgeons needed and the number available. In a presentation at the 96th AATS Annual Meeting, researchers cite such trends as fewer trainees in surgery residency programs, more exam failures, and fewer American Board of Thoracic Surgery certifications at a time when an aging population will require more cardiothoracic surgical services. They estimate that cardiothoracic surgeons would have to increase their caseload by 121% to meet demand, something that is not feasible.

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Little is known about mitral valve (MV) surgical outcomes within the largest US federal health system – the Veterans Administration (VA) Health System. At the 96th AATS Annual Meeting, data presented from 40 VA cardiac surgery centers reveal that although MV repair rates increased from 48% in 2001 to 63% in 2013, a wide variability exists in repair rates among medical centers. This is especially important because MV repair mortality rates were significantly lower in patients with primary degenerative disease.

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Manizales-Más, Babson’s entrepreneurship and economy-boosting collaboration with the Colombian city of Manizales, has made impactful strides and seen record success since its full-scale launch in 2012.

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A team of surgeons in Japan has developed a technique to relieve airway obstruction in children. The technique, known as external stenting (ES), expands and stabilizes the airway by suspending its wall to a rigid prosthesis placed around the bronchus or trachea. ES avoids the problem of granulation formation resulting from endolumenal corrective approaches, such as endoscopic stent placement. In a presentation at the 96th AATS Annual Meeting, the researchers describe the ES technique in detail as well as report on indications, complications, and long-term outcomes.

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Light sensitivity, or photophobia, is a frequent symptom of migraine headaches, which affect nearly 15 percent of the world’s population. A new study, led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and published today in Brain, has found that exposing migraine sufferers to a narrow band of green light significantly reduces photophobia and can reduce headache severity.

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For children with severe heart failure, the only available means of life support are ventricular assist devices (VADs) placed outside the body. These devices are associated with significant risks and the need for hospital management. In conjunction with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, investigators have now developed a miniaturized implantable VAD for small children (the Infant Jarvik 2015). The results of testing the device in live sheep are presented at the 96th AATS Annual Meeting.

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Up to 50% of patients with soft tissue sarcoma (STS) develop lung metastases. Effective systemic therapies for metastatic STS are currently limited; when possible, surgical removal of the lung metastases (known as pulmonary metastasectomy, PM) is the preferred treatment. However, guidelines for the performance of PM for STS do not exist and decisions to operate are often made on an individual basis. In a presentation at the 96th AATS Annual Meeting, researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center share the results of their experience with more than 500 patients with pulmonary metastases from STS and describe prognostic factors associated with improved survival.

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Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have identified an enzyme that is significantly elevated in mouse models of systemic lupus erythematosus and in blood samples of patients with lupus. Published online today in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, the new findings demonstrate that inhibition of the SHP-2 enzyme can significantly diminish lupus symptoms – including skin lesions, enlarged spleen and kidney failure – and suggest that development of a SHP-2 inhibitor drug could offer a new therapeutic approach for this often debilitating disease.

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Basic research into the dual nature of certain immune system cells has set the stage for a new approach to cancer immunotherapy that avoids some of the shortcomings associated with other methods, scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute report in a new study.

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Researchers at Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN) have identified risk factors for unplanned readmissions following esophageal resection. The results of their new study provide complete follow-up data for all patients undergoing esophagectomy at a high volume center over a one-year period in order to identify risk factors associated with unplanned readmissions. Karen J. Dickinson, MD, presents the results of this research at the 96th AATS Annual Meeting on behalf of the Thoracic Surgery Research Team at Mayo Clinic.

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The TRANSFORM trial was designed to evaluate the safety and performance of an investigational rapid deployment aortic valve replacement (RDAVR) system for patients with severe aortic stenosis. Presented at the 96th AATS Annual Meeting, investigators showed that more than 96% of TRANSFORM patients had survived after one year and only 0.2% required reoperation. Cardiac function improved in 73%. Compared to conventional treatment, this procedure required significantly less cross-clamp and cardiopulmonary bypass times, even when smaller incisions were used.

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Analysis of data from the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) demonstrates that the survival rates of patients with Stage IIIA NSCLC who underwent surgery increased more than three-fold for those who received four quality measures as part of their care. The study, presented by Pamela Samson MD, MPHS, of Washington University in St. Louis at the 96th AATS Annual Meeting, also shows a wide variability in compliance with quality measures, with only 12.8% of almost 8,000 eligible patients having received all four interventions. The study highlights the importance of implementing these recommended steps into actual practice.

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Through Babson College’s Initiative on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery, the Human Freedom Entrepreneurial Leadership Program held its first annual Human Freedom Entrepreneurial Leadership Program Competition on May 13, 2016 at Babson’s Wellesley campus.

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During heart surgery, it is sometimes necessary to temporarily stop cardiac activity, a process known as cardioplegia. Specific myocardial protection techniques are necessary for pediatric use. At the 96th AATS Annual Meeting, cardiac surgeons present the results of a prospective, randomized trial of pediatric heart surgery patients that shows that the del Nido cardioplegia solution, a new, long-acting agent, offers significant advantages over conventional cardioplegia, including reduced cardiopulmonary bypass and aortic cross-clamp times and faster onset of action.

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Tricuspid regurgitation (TR) occurs when the heart’s tricuspid valve leaks, allowing blood to flow back from the right ventricle to the right atrium. TR can be secondary to disorders of left-sided heart valves (mitral or aortic). At the 96th AATS Annual Meeting, investigators present the results of a long-term study of patients who underwent mitral valve (MV) repair. They found that although newly developed TR after MV repair was rare, the risk could increase in older patients with atrial fibrillation and impaired heart function.

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AATS Annual Meeting at a glance with important links and 11 associated news releases

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Harvard Medical School researchers Stirling Churchman and Mary Couvillion describe the “elegant synchronization” they discovered between the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes in yeast. Video: Rick Groleau and Stephanie Dutchen Our cells contain two different genomes: one in the cell nucleus and another in the mitochondria. Each has its own distinct machinery and evolutionary origin.

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Olin College of Engineering has named Catherine J. Didion as vice president for development, family and alumni relations.

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Williams College Prof. Jessica Chapman awarded $240,000 grant to pursue anthropological training to continue her research on the economic and cultural influence of Kenya's running industry.

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Williams College Prof. Jay Pasachoff has received a National Geographic Society grant for his expedition to Salem, Oregon to view a total solar eclipse in 2017.

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Babson College Professors James M. Hunt and Joseph R. Weintraub have released the 3rd edition of The Coaching Manager: Developing Top Talent in Business.

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An FDA-approved clinical trial is underway at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Massachusetts General Hospital for Children to evaluate the use of a hypoglossal nerve stimulator — a technology currently available to adults with severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) that stimulates the upper airway to facilitate breathing during sleep — in a select group of adolescent patients with Down syndrome and OSA. A case report on the first patient in the trial – whose implantation on April 8th, 2015, represented the first time the technology has been used in a pediatric patient in the United States – has been published in the May issue of Pediatrics. The clinical trial will now be expanded to include four additional sites in the U.S.

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The planet Mercury will cross the face of the Sun on Monday, May 9, and Williams College professor Jay Pasachoff will be observing it from the Big Bear Solar Observatory in California. “At the 1999 transit of Mercury,” Pasachoff reports, “Glenn Schneider of the University of Arizona and I used spacecraft observations to show in detail how the merger of Mercury’s edge and the Sun’s edge appears. The dark silhouette of Mercury interacts with the unsharp edge of the Sun to give optical effects that hundreds of years ago for a similar event with Venus were confused with the discovery of Venus’s atmosphere.”

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Delirium, or sudden severe confusion due to rapid changes in brain function that can occur with physical or mental illness, affects 15% to 53% of older surgical patients. New research led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) may now help clinicians assess an individual patient’s risk of developing post-operative delirium, enabling preventive measures to safeguard their health. Published online today in the journal Biological Psychiatry, the research also provides insights into the potential mechanisms involved in the development of delirium, which could lead to new therapeutic strategies.

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A virtual tour through the pore. Animation: James Chou Researchers have determined the structure of part of the tiny passageways that allow calcium ions to enter mitochondria and kick off cellular energy production. The findings, reported May 2 in Nature, promise to help researchers better understand how the channel, known as the mitochondrial calcium uniporter, works so speedily and precisely and what happens when it breaks—a question of growing interest since mutations in the uniporter have recently been linked to intermittent fatigue and lethargy.

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Recently developed treatments that cure hepatitis C virus (HCV) will create new opportunities for people with other liver diseases to receive transplanted livers. Only one-third of Americans who need liver transplants receive them and shortages are expected to rise as the transplant waiting list continues to grow even as the supply of organs remains flat.