Good news for lab animals who have had heart attacks: Harvard researchers have grown a strip of beating mouse heart muscle from embryonic stem cells, according to the Globe’s White Coat Notes blog. The breakthrough will be detailed tomorrow in the journal Science.
Sure, it’s no human ear growing out of a mouse’s back, but it gets stem cell research that much closer to making replaceable parts for humans, or making a heart like a carburator.
Not to be outdone by the unnerving motion of a robot made from “jammable slurry,” one of the researchers compares the heart-muscle strip to a “fruit roll-up.” Delicious.
Click the medals, and then the questions on the multimedia feature above to hear audio of the winners.
I dropped by Harvard last night before the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony — a Nobel Prize takeoff that honors research that makes people laugh, then think. Most of the ten prizewinners were assembled in the Sanders Theater prior to the show, which I was told would include a “Bernie Madoff-themed cabaret” — it’s not on YouTube yet, but you’ll be the first to know when it is. The show also featured a performance from the Boston Squeezebox Ensemble, and I cannot begin to imagine what that could possibly be.
Among the winners, Javier Morales and Miguel Apátiga, researchers at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, were honored for developing a process that makes diamond from tequila. Apátiga said one experiment used 25 million liters of booze.
Donald Unger cracked the knuckles of his left hand for more than 60 years to test his mother’s theory on arthritis, and picked up the Ig Nobel medicine prize for his efforts. Winning the award amazed him — Unger said he’s done great work in his time, but this wasn’t it. (more…)
NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory is a telescope orbiting the earth and controlled from a building within walking distance of Paddy’s Lunch. Despite that, the Harvard-run satellite is tracking down X-ray emissions exploded stars, galaxy clusters and the areas surrounding black holes.
Harvard’s Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, which operates the telescope, has released detailed images and video of the Milky Way. The image above is actually a mosaic of 88 separate “pictures” taken by the telescope. Check out the observatory web site for all kind of interactive animations and high-resolution images.
MIT economist Esther Duflo, Harvard researchers Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan and Peter Huybers, Yale researchers Richard Prum and Mary Tinetti, and Project HEALTH founder Rebecca Onie each received $500,000 to further their research.
Mahadevan, above tries to answer everyday questions with applied mathematics — how cloth falls, or how skin wrinkles.
After the jump, watch video of the remaining New England grant recipients. (more…)
Harvard’s Niemann Journalism Lab posts a document outlining the micropayment platform being developed by Google. The search giant submitted the plan to the Newspaper Association of America in a response to a request for proposals the NAA released to offset the journalistic apocalypse.
The platform is an outgrowth of Google Checkout. The 8-page outline suggests a few options, including packaging access to customizable groups of news outlets under a subscription, and charging $.10 for access to an article from an outlet outside the package; and a Fast Lane-esque account that would be debited every time you read an article.
That’s all fine, but what does Jeff Jarvis think? Last week, the new media guru, author of What Would Google Do? said the company had a media problem, and could help fix it becoming “news’ best friend.” Evidently, he does not think this qualifies. Via Twitter:
Goog micropayments for papers: A cynical act, I’d say: a tool no one uses used to coopt foes on a useless quest.
Incidentally, that’ll be five bucks — pending the establishment of a standardized, widely adopted micropayment system, please send payment to Brendan Lynch, Mass High Tech, 160 Federal St., 12th Floor, Boston, MA 02110.
MC Hammer (real name: Stanley Burrell) — rapper, entrepreneur, social media maven and TV star on A&E’s “Hammertime” — gave the key note talk at today’s Gravity Summit social media marketing event for businesses.
Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Gravity Summit, which holds seminars across the U.S. to educate marketers about the uses of social media, held its all-day event at the Harvard Faculty Club.
The summit offered tips on how companies can take advantage of social media and featured a variety of speakers, from MC Hammer to executives from Boston-based Arnold Worldwide, the American Red Cross and CNN. (The event was also streamed live on CNN.com.)
With about 1.3 million followers on Twitter, MC Hammer, once known mainly for the hit “U Can’t Touch this” and puffy, parachute pants, wields a hefty amount of social media clout these days. Now he spends much of his time making the rounds to Harvard, Stanford University and organizations to dole out social media tidbits to help both businesses and musicians.
MC Hammer, who engages in all forms of social media, says it’s not a question any more of whether social media works. He whole-heartedly thinks that it does. He noted that for most businesses, it’s a good idea to find out where your audience is (i.e. Twitter, Facebook etc.) and engage with them.
“If you’re allowing someone else to control the perception of the brand, then you’re in trouble,” MC Hammer said at the event, which was attended by about 150 people.
MC Hammer also said that despite having tweeted over 6,000 times and counting, he’s never regreted a single tweet.
Other attendees of the event included Arnold Worldwide CEO Fran Kelly, Mullen chief creative officer Edward Boches and Shift Communications Principal Todd Defren.
Speaker Wendy Harman, social media manager at the American Red Cross, had some interesting points about how nonprofits use social media. The Red Cross, according to Harman, uses Twitter to “execute its mission” and update the public about disasters in real time.
Meanwhile, Todd Defren of Shift noted that people want to interact with brands that “humanize” themselves and have authentic things to say.
Or, as MC Hammer would say, brands just need to make sure their social media interactions are legit.
The Daily Show’s John Oliver interviewed some Harvard Business and MIT Sloan about their reluctance to sign an ethics oath, and introduces them to an angry ex-con.
A Vanity Fair report says Harvard’s endowment is losing money, just not as much as the college says it is. A source tells VF that the endowment will shrink 23 percent to 25 percent, rather than the 30 percent Harvard has predicted.
In a denial that shows how fully upside down the recession has turned the world, Harvard president Drew Gilpin-Faust issued a statement saying, no, the endowment really is losing 30 percent.
The Wall Street Journal’s Venture Capital Dispatch takes a look at a study by Harvard and the Federal Reserve that says startups often do better outside the usual VC hubs of Boston, New York and Silicon Valley. But it’s not just the sweet, sweet freedom from micromanagement:
That flies in the face of the conventional wisdom, which is that start-ups benefit from having VCs nearby to monitor them, coach the management team and provide key introductions to other entrepreneurs or investors. So does that mean start-ups are better off when VCs leave them alone – in effect serving as absentee VCs that just provide the cash and don’t meddle?
Not exactly. The study speculates that the reason for the better performance of companies that are off the beaten path may be more due to what the researchers call a “higher hurdle rate,” or the requirement by VCs of a higher expected rate of return. In other words, when investing outside of their local area, VCs will tend to use a higher threshold and invest in companies that they believe have a greater-than-usual chance of going public, to make up for the travel costs and inconvenience of monitoring a far-flung company.
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