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 […]
Big Data and Improving Health Care
Data scientist and physician team up to reduce preventable hospitalizations By: Suzanne Jacobs Big Data Meets Healthcare—Bill Adams, a physician and medical informatician, and Yannis Paschalidis, a data scientist and engineer, are working together to use data from electronic health records to reduce preventable hospitalizations and cut health care costs. Photo by Jackie Ricciardi. Yannis […]
Untangling the Connectome
Narayanan “Bobby” Kasthuri on how our wiring makes us human By: Barbara Moran Bobby Kasthuri needs a map. Not your everyday, get-me-to-Kenmore-Square kind of map. He’s got something else in mind. What Kasthuri needs is a map of all the connections in the human brain—kind of a wiring diagram for neurons. Kasthuri, an assistant professor […]
Preventing an Antibiotic Apocalypse
The business model for drug innovation is broken — universities key to figuring out fixes, says health law prof By: Sara Rimer Kevin Outterson is a leading scholar on the economic and legal global framework needed to combat resistance and keep antibiotics available for future generations. Photo by Jackie Ricciardi. When Kevin Outterson, a professor […]
Speaking, Cooking, and Singing in Zulu
Innovative African language program boosted by federal By: Susan Seligson Xhosa, the most common of the official languages of South Africa, is among the languages taught in BU’s African Studies Center language program, which recently received major funding from the US Department of Education. Photo by Flickr Contributor Meredith Nutting. The daughter of missionaries, Beth […]
NSF CAREER Award Goes to ENG Prof
Thin rod study has potential for smart needles, robotic arms ENG’s Douglas Holmes will receive $500,000 over the next five years to study the mechanics of how thin rods move through tissue and other soft, fragile media. Photo courtesy of the College of Engineering. Thin rods and other active materials that can bend and fold […]
Astronomy: New Vision of the Final Frontier
Astronomer boldly redraws boundary at solar system’s end By: Kate Becker Women at the edge of STEM: Merav Opher, on the left, is the only female investigator on the Voyager team, shown here at a meeting in 2014. Suzanne R. Dodd, in middle, is program manager. Photo courtesy of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. […]
Beating the Binge
Alzheimer’s drug may reduce urge to eat compulsively BU professors Pietro Cottone and Valentina Sabino hope their research could eventually lead to new treatment for the disorder. Photo by Michael D. Spencer. Binge-eating disorder affects nearly 10 million American adults, by some estimates. It’s a vicious condition in which people repeatedly eat huge amounts of […]
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 […]
Queen Anne Reconsidered
James Winn’s book examines flowering of arts during short 18th-century reign As a young man, James A. Winn was often advised that he would have to choose. He could be a serious literary scholar or a professional flutist; it was not possible to be both. Winn proved them wrong. He is now a William Fairfield Warren […]