Research Magazine 2009

Features

In Harm’s Way: The Wide-Ranging Repercussions of WarIn the past eight years, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the larger “war on terror” have become such a persistent part of the national cognizance that, in some ways, these conflicts have also exhausted our attention and begun to fade from the public eye. Read More…
Offering Hope: Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’sThere is no known cure for the most common neurodegenerative diseases, including many that produce dementia, and the rapidly escalating number of cases is threatening the shaky financial situation of the U.S. health care system, as baby boomers live into their eighties and nineties. More than 1.5 million Americans currently live with Parkinson’s disease, and another 5 million with Alzheimer’s, both of which primarily affect those 65 and older. Read More…
Decoding Infectious DiseasesThis year’s outbreak of the H1N1 virus—formerly known as the swine flu—illustrates how quickly an infectious disease can spread around the world. Since the advent of international jet travel, bacteria and viruses once confined to remote regions have frequently hitched rides with passengers, crossing multiple time zones in a matter of hours. As globalization continues apace, the public health community is redoubling its efforts to contain the spread of infections. Read More…
Evolutionary Insights: Year of DarwinRightly or wrongly, the greatest contributions to knowledge are often boiled down to a single word. Thomas Edison: lightbulb. Marie Skłodowska-Curie: radioactivity. Albert Einstein: relativity. Charles Darwin: evolution. But, in fact, Darwin wasn’t the first to propose a theory of evolution, he was first to explain how evolution works, through the mechanism of natural selection. Read More…
Research Realized: Putting Ideas to WorkResearch doesn’t happen overnight. There are often years of preparation leading up to each eureka moment. Usually a similarly unglamorous period of work is needed afterwards to turn bright ideas into thought-provoking books and promising discoveries into useful, usable products. Read More…