The digital age provides wonderful opportunities to connect, but also big challenges, particularly for parents and their children. Laptops and smartphones, texting, sexting and online social networking can take over. That is according to Catherine Steiner-Adair, HMS research associate in psychology at McLean Hospital, author of a new book called “The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age.”
Stephen Crohn’s resistance to AIDS helped lead to a deeper understanding of H.I.V., the virus that causes the disease, simply by staying alive and working with doctors to help figure out why he was. Mr. Crohn died on Aug. 23 in New York City at 66. Bruce D. Walker, HMS professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, is quoted.
Two researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have developed a new technique to construct biological structures the size of a grain of sand with unprecedented precision, a discovery that could herald better construction of artificial tissues. Peng Yin, HMS assistant professor of systems biology and Ali Khademhosseini, HMS associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, led the project.
A study suggests some types of abnormal behavior have a physiological source, and may offer a new approach to treatment. Ruth Anne Eatock, HMS professor of otology and laryngology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, is quoted.
Many investigators affected by sequestration are weighing their options. Thomas Michel, HMS professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is quoted.
A new device, made by EasySense, slips under the mattress instead of attaching to the patient, cutting back on false alarms. It’s sensitive enough to detect the patients’ breathing, pulse rate, and whether he or she is moving around too much or too little. David Bates, HMS professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is quoted.
The staff of the Health Policy Commission is set to recommend Wednesday against the new state watchdog panel conducting a review of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s deal to acquire the 155-bed Jordan Hospital in Plymouth, effectively allowing the merger to begin.
Estrogen, the female sex hormone, turns out to play a much bigger role in men’s bodies than previously thought, and falling levels contribute to their expanding waistlines just as they do in women’s. Joel Finkelstein, HMS associate professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, is the study’s lead author.
Scientists have turned back the hands of time in cells within a living creature. Researchers in Spain used a technique created seven years ago to force mature cells in mice to revert to an original form of stem cell with the potential to change into any type of living tissue. George Daley, HMS professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Boston Children’s Hospital, wrote an accompanying editorial on the work.
