Research Magazine 2010

Snapshots

Massachusetts: Health Care Reform’s Guinea Pig?Ever since Massachusetts became the first state to mandate health insurance in 2006, the nation has been watching to see how the reforms would impact patients and hospitals. A recent study conducted by School of Medicine faculty members Amresh Hanchate and Nancy Kressin may offer some clues. Read More…
Building a Better VaccineStreptococcus pneumoniae—a bacterium that can cause pneumonia, meningitis, and a host of other invasive infections, resulting in the deaths of between two and three million children each year—is a master of disguise. Its outermost surface is covered by a capsule made up of sugars, and can come in any of 91 different capsular variants, or serotypes, depending on the composition of the sugars. Read More…
Orchestrating SuccessFreedom of expression. Freedom to travel. Freedom to live an intellectually stimulating, professionally challenging life. That quest for freedom impelled Yuri Mazurkevich, professor of music, and his wife, Dana, associate professor of music, to leave the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s and head west. Read More…
Recollection of Things PastNature Morte, the title of a recent exhibition that included nine photogravures by School of Visual Arts Director Lynne Allen, is the French term for still life. But the literal translation is more grim: “dead nature.” For Allen, the two connotations are equally apt. Read More…
The Neuroscientist and the TheologianFor the philosopher and theologian Wesley Wildman, considering religion through the lens of science comes naturally. An associate professor of philosophy, theology, and ethics in the School of Theology, Wildman trained as a mathematician and physicist before becoming a scholar of religion, and he has continued to study and write about the intersection of the two fields. Read More…
Traffic CopThere is a good chance you own a zombie. It could have been infected by a website you visited, or a link you clicked in an email from a trusted friend. Or maybe you didn’t do anything at all to compromise your computer, and still an attacker slipped past your firewalls and turned your computer into a virulent drone. Read More…
A Breath of Fresh AirOne of the first scientific facts that schoolchildren learn is that human respiration involves the intake of oxygen and the exhalation of carbon dioxide. Scientists have long understood that respiration works in the reverse for vegetation: growing plants take in carbon dioxide—carbon, for short—and release oxygen. Read More…