Focus: Hidden - Massachusetts

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Hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) is a congenital defect in which the left side of the heart does not develop properly, impairing normal circulation. A series of surgeries can help restore heart function. A new study in The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, the official publication of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, found use of a ring-reinforced cylinder instead of the usual non-reinforced conduit improved survival, reduced need for re-interventions, and induced physiological changes that may make patients better candidates for recovery after future surgeries.

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In a Viewpoint published today in the Journal of the Medical Association (JAMA), researchers from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy at Tufts University and Boston Children’s Hospital call on the federal government to drop restrictions on total fat consumption in the forthcoming 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

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Statins have been shown to reduce complications from cardiovascular surgery. To determine whether statins might also help those undergoing major lung surgeries, a team at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center conducted a well-designed study that randomized patients to receive either a statin or placebo before and after surgery. They found that patients undergoing major lung resection experienced fewer complications overall, however, the differences between groups for specific complications or changes in inflammatory markers failed to reach statistical significance, according to a report in The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, the official publication of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS).

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The American Collegiate Retailing Association (ACRA) has awarded Michael Levy, the Charles Clarke Reynolds Professor of Marketing at Babson College, with its inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award in Academics.

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A team of researchers led by Yu-Hua Tseng, Ph.D., Investigator in the Section on Integrative Physiology and Metabolism at Joslin Diabetes Center and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, has created cell lines of human brown and white fat precursor cells that will help investigators to pick apart the factors that drive the development and activity of each type of cell.

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Two studies demonstrate that hyperlipidemia (high cholesterol and high triglycerides in the blood) caused by a high-fat diet accelerates heart-transplant rejection in mice. The researchers from Tufts University School of Medicine also found that simply feeding mice a high-fat diet increased organ rejection.

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Chemists have witnessed atoms of one chemical element morph into another for the first time ever—a feat that produced an unexpected outcome that could lead to a new way to safely treat cancer with radiation.

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Cardiac surgeons often “crack open” the flat bone that forms the middle front section of the chest, known as the sternum, in order to reach important structures. When a sternal wound infection (SWI) occurs, serious complications and even death may result. Implanting antibiotic-laden sponges between the sternal halves before closure has been adapted to prevent infections. While a recent report questioned this practice, a meta-analysis in The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, the official publication of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, clearly established that the sponges do work.

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Joslin Diabetes Center announced today that San MediTech, located in Beijing, China, has joined the Joslin Institute for Technology Translation (JITT) as a Founding Member.

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​The 35th annual Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference (BCERC) will take place June 10-13, 2015 in Natick, MA. BCERC, widely considered the premier conference for entrepreneurship research, was established in 1981 to provide a dynamic venue where academics and real-world practitioners link theory and practice, and to encourage and increase quality research in entrepreneurship.

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Diane Windham Shaw, scholar of the Marquis de Lafayette, is director of special collections and the college archivist at Lafayette College, and is an excellent source on Lafayette’s legacy as a key figure in the American Revolution.

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A daily sugar-sweetened beverage habit may increase the risk for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), researchers from the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University report in the Journal of Hepatology.

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After a concussion, a person can have disturbed sleep, memory deficits and other problems for years, but a new study suggests that despite these, sleep still helps them to overcome memory deficits, and the benefit is equal to that seen in individuals with no history of mild traumatic brain injury.

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Pier Paolo Pandolfi, MD, PhD, Director of the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, has been knighted by his native country of Italy. Pandolfi, an internationally recognized cancer geneticist, was honored on June 3 at Boston's Italian consulate.

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An artificial intelligence system has reverse-engineered the regeneration mechanism of planaria, a common model in regenerative medicine. This is the first reported model of regeneration discovered by a non-human intelligence, and the first comprehensive model of planarian regeneration, which has long eluded human scientists.

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Leveraging a novel system designed to examine the double-strand DNA breaks that occur as a consequence of gene amplification during DNA replication, Whitehead Institute scientists are bringing new clarity to the causes of such genomic damage. Moreover, because errors arising during DNA replication and gene amplification result in chromosomal abnormalities often found in malignant cells, these new findings may bolster our understandings of certain drivers of cancer progression.

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This one-day symposium at MIT will examine the heterogeneity within tumors that shape their evolutions and allow them to resist treatments. Nearly 1,000 cancer researchers and clinical oncologists will assemble to learn about the latest breakthroughs in overcoming the clinical challenges this complexity creates for cancer diagnostics and therapy.

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New research published in the American Journal of Veterinary Research has found that a substance called dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) shows promise as a potential cryopreservant for freezing avian blood.

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When experiments at the Large Hadron Collider collect the first 13-teraelectronvolt particle collisions data today, a long wait will be over for physicists who now begin some of the most exciting years of their careers searching for new particles, extra dimensions and the nature of dark matter.

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Babson College students and alumni continue to earn their way into the entrepreneurial spotlight, including six recent honorees, and two ultimate winners, of Inc. Magazine’s 2015 readers’ choice rankings.

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BOSTON – A new study from researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) suggests that risk factors for readmission change significantly over the course of the 30 days following hospital discharge. Thirty-day hospital readmission rates have become a federal quality metric intended to reflect inpatient quality of care and unnecessary health care utilization.

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In a ceremony on May 15 in Dublin, Ireland, The Fondation IPSEN awarded C. Ronald Kahn, M.D., Chief Academic Officer and Senior Vice President at Joslin Diabetes Center and the Mary K. Iacocca Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, the 2015 Endocrine Regulation Prize.

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Babson’s Women Innovating Now (WIN) Lab will host its Women’s Entrepreneurship Summer Soiree at the Fields Corner Business Lab in Boston on Thursday, June 4, 2015. The WIN Lab, a yearlong residency program within Babson’s Center for Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership (CWEL), invites entrepreneurs of all kinds to enjoy a free, one-of-a-kind networking event alongside local women business leaders and entrepreneurial resource providers.

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​Babson College’s collaborative sustainability program has earned a Gold Rating through the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education's Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System™ (STARS) program.

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Two Williams College professors have been awarded an NSF grant to study inter-species dependencies called "mutualisms." The Biology and Chemistry professors will study how different species interact with and affect one another.

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Engineers at MIT and the University of California at San Diego have devised a new way to detect cancer that has spread to the liver, by enlisting help from probiotics — beneficial bacteria similar to those found in yogurt.

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Carbon monoxide is typically associated with brain injury and neurological symptoms. But a new study led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center suggests that when administered in small, carefully controlled amounts, CO may actually protect the brain from damage following hemorrhagic stroke.

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Babson College has recognized ten alumni entrepreneurs as the 2015 Alumni Entrepreneur “Rising Stars”. These individuals have successfully distinguished themselves in their entrepreneurial endeavors, having founded businesses within the past ten years, making an impact in the marketplace, and generating notable media attention.

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A new study from researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst concludes that workers and governments have paid a heavy price in lost employment, wages and taxes over the past 35 years as Main Street firms mimicked Wall Street by speculating in financial assets, while the benefits from these financial investments were reaped primarily by corporate debt and equity holders, fostering inequality and eroding general social welfare.

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Babson Entrepreneurship Professor Joel Shulman, who pioneered investing in publicly-traded entrepreneurial companies through his company EntrepreneurShares, LLC, has been ranked the #1 US Large Cap Blend Equity Manager for separate accounts by Pensions & Investments for the five year period ending March 31, 2015.

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MIT researchers have shown that they can use a microfluidic cell-squeezing device to introduce specific antigens inside the immune system’s B cells, providing a new approach to developing and implementing antigen-presenting cell vaccines.

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Tyler Jacks, a pioneering cancer biologist and director of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, is this year’s recipient of MIT’s James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award. The Killian Award is the highest honor MIT grants to members of its faculty.

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Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center (DF/BWCC), a leader in the field, has a new website to connect patients and physicians with information about precision cancer medicine.

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Research in the lab of Edward P. Feener, Ph.D., Investigator in the Section on Vascular Cell Biology and Director of the Proteomics Core at Joslin Diabetes Center and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, now has shown that a substantial percentage of patients with DME do not have high levels of VEGF in the fluid inside their eyes but do have high levels of a protein called PKal (plasma kallikrein) and associated molecules that are key players in an inflammatory molecular pathway involved in the disease.

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A novel blood test could greatly improve triage of victims of radiation accidents by rapidly predicting who will survive, who will die, and who should receive immediate medical countermeasures, according to scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

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Research led by scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute showed a new drug and a potentiating agent lengthened the lives of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer, all of whom had exhausted available standard treatments.

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Wellesley, Colgate University, Davidson College, and Hamilton College gathered Monday to announce the formation of a new consortium promoting joint educational and technological collaboration with a focus on online teaching and learning in the liberal arts.

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A new technique invented at MIT can measure the relative positions of tiny particles as they flow through a fluidic channel, potentially offering an easy way to monitor the assembly of nanoparticles, or to study how mass is distributed within a cell. With further advancements, this technology has the potential to resolve the shape of objects in flow as small as viruses, the researchers say.

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Jianmin Qu, a skilled academic leader whose research in theoretical and applied mechanics has led to safer airplanes and other advances, was named dean of the School of Engineering at Tufts University, effective August 1. Qu is currently Walter P. Murphy Professor and chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University.

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New research published by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Labor Center asserts how the illegal theft of workers’ wages, especially those of undocumented immigrant laborers, has reached epidemic levels in the residential construction industry in Massachusetts. In the working paper “The Epidemic of Wage Theft in Residential Construction in Massachusetts,” Tom Juravich, professor of sociology, with research assistants and co-authors Essie Ablavsky and Jake Williams, present three case studies examining the subcontractors for one of the nation’s largest homebuilding companies, regional drywall-hanging companies and affordable housing construction by a community development corporation.

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Joslin researchers have uncovered the action of a gene that regulates the education of T cells, providing insight into how and why the immune system begins mistaking the body’s own tissues for targets.

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A new study shows that the microbial communities we carry in and on our bodies—known as the human microbiome—have the potential to uniquely identify individuals, much like a fingerprint.

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Diamond Blackfan anemia (DBA), a rare inherited bone marrow failure syndrome is typically treated with glucocorticoids that cause a host of often dangerous side effects. Using a mouse model, Whitehead scientists have determined that combining the drug fenofibrate with glucocorticoids could allow for dramatically lower steroid doses in the treatment of DBA and other erythropoietin-resistant anemias. These promising results are the foundation for a clinical trial that will begin soon.

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PRWeek celebrated revered winners and finalists at its recent 2015 Global Awards ceremony in London, including Babson and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) as one of the top two Global Partnerships in the world. Babson - honored to come only second in its category to the renowned 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, was among a diverse group representing the most forward-thinking organizations and initiatives focused on building brands and trust across international borders.

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Men who went on cholesterol-lowering statin drugs when they began androgen deprivation therapy for prostate cancer had a longer time in which their disease was under control than did men who didn’t take statins, a clinical trial led by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute investigators shows.

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The Global Biological Standards Institute (GBSI) has launched a video competition as part of its #authenticate campaign, which is designed to raise awareness in the life science community about the powerful role cell authentication can play in improving research reproducibility and fidelity.

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Babson College History Professor Frederick Douglass Opie offers new insights into the causes and results of 20th century social movements in his recent book - Upsetting the Apple Cart – Black-Latino Coalitions in New York City from Protest to Public Office.

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Wellesley College has announced the second run of the popular WellesleyX course Anthropology 207x: Introduction to Human Evolution. The course, which is open and free of cost to anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world, will begin on May 6.

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Two prominent HMS/Mass. Eye and Ear/Schepens faculty members will receive prestigious 2015 achievement awards today at ARVO Annual Meeting. On May 5, the winners of the 2014 António Champalimaud Vision Award will be recognized.

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A new study coauthored by Wellesley economist, Professor Daniel E. Sichel, reveals that innovation in an important technology sector is happening faster than experts had previously thought, creating a backdrop for better economic times ahead.