Could Pee-Wee Football Lead to Brain Injury?
MED study: more brain damage in NFL players who started playing early The new MED study is the first to show a link between early exposure to repetitive head impacts and structural brain changes later in life. Photo courtesy of Flickr contributor Captrosha. Last January, HBO’s Real Sports host Bryant Gumbel interviewed former NFL coach and player […]
Gut Reactions
New grants put software to work on bioenergy and human microbiome Daniel Segrè, associate professor of bioinformatics, biomedical engineering and biology, uses mathematical modeling to understand the microbiome. Photo by Cydney Scott. Daniel Segrè studies very unusual microbes. They don’t live in petri dishes, guts, or on dirty kitchen countertops. In fact, they don’t live […]
Molecule Makers
A unique chemical library offers new hope for hard-to-treat diseases By Kate Becker and photos by Dan Aguirre. Can a molecule be beautiful? As director of BU’s Center for Molecular Discovery (CMD), John Porco has helped to create some 7,000 new molecules. To a chemist’s eye, their ornate “architecture” makes them beautiful, says Porco. But […]
$1.6 NIH Grant for Pneumonia Research
Medical School professor will study how immunity to the disease develops and how it protects certain people “The goal of this study is to better define the immune mechanisms preventing pneumonia during late childhood and much of adulthood,” says Joseph Mizgerd. Photo by Cydney Scott. Joseph Mizgerd, a professor of medicine, microbiology, and biochemistry at […]
Space Science for Bone Biologists
BU researchers send bone cells into space to learn about bone loss, osteoporosis, and how to reverse it By Elizabeth Dougherty The Osteo-4 Team: Paola Divieti Pajevic (front) and her team of space enthusiasts and skeletal biologists: (from left) research fellow Chao Shi, lab manager Forest Lai, research fellow Yuhei Uda, lab tech Chris Dedic, […]
RNA Rising
Dental school scientist wins $2 million from NIH to study RNA in African sleeping sickness By: Barbara Moran Biologist Inna Afasizheva was recently awarded a $2 million grant from the NIH. Her decades of work have increased our understanding of a process called RNA editing. Photo by Michael D. Spencer. In 1953, James Watson […]
Promotion to Full Professor for Four MED Faculty
Expertise in cancer treatment, PTSD, antibiotic resistance, blood transfusion Four faculty members of the School of Medicine have been promoted to full professor in recognition of their scholarship. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky. Their research runs the gamut from high-tech cancer-spotting to preventing domestic violence among veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. And their expertise has earned […]
Charles River Campus Has 21 New Full Professors
Movin’ on up in five colleges Faculty from five BU schools on the Charles River Campus have been promoted to full professor. Photo by Robert Dolan. Beholding creation, Christopher Schneider longs to understand the forces—evolution, environment, history—that have woven the astounding tapestry of living things. He researches how animal ecology acts with those forces in […]
Making TB the Next Polio
BU team lands $21 million NIH grant to study the disease When Jerrold Ellner started working in infectious disease, schistosomiasis was a greater concern to international health professionals than tuberculosis. Fast forward a few decades and TB is now among the greatest public health threats worldwide. There are nine million new cases and three million […]
Higher Alcohol Taxes May Lead to Less Binge Drinking
BU public health study finds strong correlation between price and alcohol consumption Study lead author Ziming Xuan of SPH says researchers’ findings are “really significant for public health,” because binge drinking causes more than half of nearly 90,000 alcohol-attributable deaths in the United States. In 2010, Tennessee, which has the country’s highest combined taxes on […]