For the first time, researchers leading the long-running Framingham Heart Study have estimated the lifetime risk of developing heart disease. At age 40, the lifetime risk is one in two for men, and one in three women. The study results will appear in the January 9 issue of The Lancet.
Doctors may not be aggressive enough in managing hypertension, researchers from the US Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University School of Medicine reported in the December 31, 1998 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
A toxin which may be largely responsible for many of the symptoms associated with Lyme Disease has been identified by Boston University Medical Center researchers. The study results will be presented at the 36th Annual Meeting of the Infectious Disease Society of America to be held Friday, November 13, 1998, in Denver, CO.
Researchers at Boston University's College of Engineering received funding to develop innovative techniques for managing such complex systems as modern manufacturing facilities, global communication networks, and world-wide economic systems. The new tools, which will draw on advanced computational techniques and today's unprecedented computing power, will also help scientists solve complex problems in computational physics.
In the first study of its kind, researchers in the department of urology at Boston University School of Medicine have determined that pharmaceutical agents are effective in modifying the ability of clitoral corpal smooth muscle to relax following stimulation, they reported in the September issue of Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications.
Boston University has been selected to participate in a $40.5 million National Science Foundation (NSF) initiative to develop programs that will better prepare students for the wide variety of emerging careers in the rapidly evolving fields of science and engineering.
More than 150 top journalists will meet with a selection of the nation's most distinguished researchers at Boston University on November 1 - 5 to explore a range of the most important new developments at the frontiers of science, medicine, and technology, organized each year by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, based in New York.
Boston University School of Medicine in collaboration with Stanford University School of Medicine is holding the First International Symposium on Virtual Colonoscopy, beginning October 1, 1998.
Three thousand philosophers from around the world will convene in Boston on August 10 for the 1998 World Congress of Philosophy, a gathering held only once every five years since 1900. The twentieth and final Congress of the century, organized under the aegis of the FÈdÈration Internationale des SociÈtiÈs de Philosophie, will feature more than 2,000 symposia and has so far generated 1,300 scholarly papers. The last Congress held in the United States was in 1926.
A research team of scientists from the United States and Japan organized by physicists at Boston University, the University of California-Irvine, and the University of Tokyo, has found the first evidence that neutrinos -- tiny electrically neutral sub-atomic particles -- have mass. This finding, which contradicts the standard theory of particle physics, may have significant implications in the debate over whether the universe has enough mass to halt, or even reverse, the outward expansion that began with the "Big Bang" and may lead to a unified explanation of the basic nature of the universe. Because of their negligible size and lack of charge, neutrinos can pass through the entire earth without interacting with matter, making them extremely difficult to detect.
In this week's edition of Nature, scientists at Boston University's Department of Biomedical Engineering report a new model of ventilator assisted lung function. In this model the pressure of the air delivered by the ventilator is varied by the addition of noise.
Researchers at Boston University and Scriptgen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., have successfully synthesized two compounds that open the door to the development of an entirely new class of antibiotics for use against today's increasingly drug-resistant bacteria as well as emerging forms of bacteria. In a recent issue of the Journal of Organic Chemistry, the research team reported that they have chemically synthesized myxopyronin A and B, two natural compounds known to block replication of drug-resistant strains of bacteria. Before this breakthrough, the compounds could only be isolated from their bacterial source, a process that yielded quantities too small to be usable.
While "minimally invasive surgery" helps speed recovery from heart surgery, perhaps the most serious risk in heart surgery comes from a biochemical process known as "complement activation." But in a new study, researchers at the Boston University Medical Center have developed a new method to inhibit complement activation during open heart surgery.
Scientists from Boston University's College of Engineering have developed the first objective diagnostic tool to determine whether a patient suffers from congestive heart failure. A simple mathematical analysis of the pattern of a person's heartbeat detects the problem with 100 percent accuracy, report the scientists in the February 16th issue of Physical Review Letters.
Scientists at Boston University have announced the development of a new blue laser that may lead to a new generation of more vivid color video screens and computer displays as well as optical storage disks that can hold four times the amount of information that can be squeezed onto today's new digital video disks.
Although romance is far from dead on campus, many students believe "it's not cool" or just plain "cheesy" to show your feelings too much these days, according to a recent informal survey of more than 250 Boston University students. And as Valentine's Day approaches, most students agree that it has become too commercialized, some even saying that it has become less romantic than any other day of the year.
New research by Carson Chow and James J. Collins at Boston University's Center for BioDynamics may be the basis for a better way to help doctors identify people who are susceptible to falls. An article in the current issue of Physical Review Letters describes their finding that the physical mechanism that keeps a person standing upright works essentially the same way whether the person is standing at ease or pertubed by a slight external push.
Eliminating smoking in bars would increase business for these establishments, according to a study released Tuesday, December 2 at a New York City press briefing jointly sponsored by the American Medical Association and American Public Health Association. An overwhelming majority of Massachusetts adults - 89 percent - said that they would go out to bars just as often or more often than they do now if all bars were made smoke-free.
At the December 1ñ10 Kyoto conference on global warming, the economic consequences of imposing carbon dioxide limits versus environmental safety will be hotly debated. To help the media provide perspective on the business, scientific, political, and economic aspects of this story, we have compiled a list of experts who can address various aspects of these issues.
A substance called pTpT enhances a skin cell's natural ability to repair DNA damage from ultraviolet (UV) radiation, according to researchers from the Boston University School of Medicine. The finding suggests the possibility that topical agents could eventually be created which not only induce tanning, but also lower the risk of skin cancer.
A variant of the apolipoprotein E (apoE) gene known as apoe-4 has been shown to be a significant risk factor for Alzheimer's Disease in several ethnic and racial groups, including Caucasians, African Americans, Hispanics and Japanese. Leading a collaborative effort of hundreds of scientists around the world, researchers at Boston University School of Medicine report their conclusion in the Oct. 22 issue of JAMA. The paper, which studied the impact of the apoE gene on age and sex as well as race and ethnicity in approximately 6,000 Alzheimer's Disease patients and 8,600 non-demented controls, helps clarify the importance this gene plays in causing Alzheimer's.
Boston University joins research partners across the nation in an alliance to build the infrastructure that will link many of the world's most advanced computers into a network that will allow researchers to solve complex problems in fields such as cosmology, molecular biology, nanomaterials and environmental hydrology. In anticipation of this effort Boston University has added 128 processors to its Silicon Graphics (SGI) Origin2000TM system, giving it a total of 192 processors, and making it one of the most powerful systems available on any US university campus.
Notes in Brief: 1. A BU School of Medicine research team has deemed a transplant involving pig cells to be safe. The transplant is designed to treat symptoms of Parkinson's disease, and will shortly begin controlled trials. 2. Teenagers in Massachusetts are unlikely to seek HIV testing, although a majority believe that they are at least "a little likely" to become infected with the virus, a BU School of Public Health researcher finds.
A research team at Boston University School of Medicine has discovered that a synthetic compound significantly limits brain damage when administered after a stroke. Their finding, published September 16 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could lead to the development of drugs to treat stroke and traumatic brain or spinal cord injury. These new drugs could also slow the progression of ParkinsonÃs disease and ALS, more commonly known as ìLou GehrigÃs disease.î
A mathematically predictable form known as a fractal can describe the activity of individual cells as well as complex physiological systems, report scientists of Boston UniversityÃs College of Engineering in a paper which appears in todayÃs Journal of Neuroscience.
Preview the products and technologies that will change the way we live and work at ìPhotonics: Driving the Economy of the Future,î an inaugural symposium at the Boston University Photonics Center, on Thursday, October 23, 1997. Experts will represent industries from telecommunications to health care.
Scientists have found the strongest evidence to date that human activityóburning fossil fuel and cutting down forestsócauses global warming. Researchers uncovered the evidence using statistical analysis. Their full report, ìEvidence for Human Influence on Climate from Hemisphere Temperature Relations,î will appear in Nature on July 3.
Within the past ten years a revolution in surgery has been taking place, as procedures have become less and less invasive. Now doctors at the Boston Medical Center are at the forefront of this revolution, pioneering minimally invasive techniques on the body s most vital organ: the heart.
Novel techniques developed by Boston University researchers that allow computer users to assess the performance of their link to the Internet have been incorporated into Net.Medic, a new consumer software product which is being released today by VitalSigns Software, Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif. Embargoed: Monday, April 14, 1997 8 am EDT
Imagine an air bag system that can sense and react to the location and force of an impact, and take into account the sizes and positions of the passengers in the car. The technology for just such a system has been created and demonstrated at Boston University's Photonics Center by Dr. James E. Hubbard, Jr., senior systems engineer and Dr. Shawn E. Burke.