STAT reporter Orly Nadell Farber writes about a new study by Prof. Amy Finkelstein that challenges the widely held assumption that a large portion of Medicare spending goes towards end-of-life care. “We spend money on sick people — some of them die, some of them recover,” says Finkelstein. “Maybe some recover, in part, because of what we spent on them.”
STAT reporter Justin Chen writes about a new study that examines why patients with pancreatic cancer often experience significant weight loss. Prof. Matt Vander Heiden explains that the findings show, “pancreatic cancer patients clearly have a lot of tissue wasting and whether it’s good or bad, we can now say that it’s not necessarily bad at diagnosis.”
Boston Herald reporter Lindsay Kalter writes that MIT researchers have developed a wireless ingestible sensor that could one day be used to diagnose and treat disease. “The most exciting thing is that we can wirelessly control tiny implants even though they have no batteries at all,” says Prof. Fadel Adib.
A new study led by Prof. Li-Huei Tsai reveals more information about the possible link between Alzheimer’s disease and the gene variant APOE4, writes Martin Finucane for The Boston Globe. The researchers discovered that by editing the gene into the more common APOE3 variant, “they could eliminate the signs of Alzheimer’s in brain cells,” said Finucane.
Bucking conventional wisdom, research co-authored by Prof. Josh Tenenbaum shows that “picking up the subtleties of grammar in a a second language does not fade until well into the teens,” writes Dana G. Smith for Scientific American. “To become completely fluent, however, learning should start before the age of 10.”
MIT researchers have identified the brain circuit required for observational learning, reports Xinhua. According to the study, the area involved in evaluating social information is more active when witnessing an experience and “relays information about the experience” to the region important for processing emotions.
A new paper co-authored by Prof. Omer Yilmaz and Prof. David Sabatini found that fasting substantially “improves stem cells' ability to regenerate,” reports Xinhua. The researchers hope this finding could lead to new drug treatments that “stimulate regeneration without requiring patients to fast, which is difficult for most people.”
New research suggests “children are highly skilled at learning the grammar of a new language up until the age of 17 or 18, much longer than previously thought,” reports Kashmira Gander in Newsweek. “We may need to go back to the drawing board in trying to explain why adults have trouble learning language,” Joshua Hartshorne, who co-wrote the study as a postdoc at MIT, tells Gander.
A study co-authored by Prof. Josh Tenenbaum finds that learning a new language should start before age 10 to achieve a native-like grasp of the grammar, reports BBC News. People remain highly skilled language learners until about 17 or 18, but then fall off, which Tenenbaum says could be due to “a biological change” or “something social or cultural.”
MIT researchers have developed “the first artificial system to mimic the way the brain interprets sound – and it rivals humans in its accuracy,” reports Samia Bouzik for NOVA Next. “The research offers a tantalizing new way to study the brain…[and] could boost some neuroscience research into the fast track,” writes Bouzik.
Research published in Science Translational Medicine suggests that inflammation caused by tumor removal surgery may actually encourage the emergence of new tumors. Daniel Uria for UPI reports that the study, led by Prof. Robert Weinberg, identified “perioperative anti-inflammatory treatment” as a way to substantially reduce the likelihood of “early metastatic recurrence in breast cancer patients.”
New research from MIT and the Whitehead Institute suggests that “the body’s own mechanism for healing” may cause cancerous cells to spread after breast cancer-related surgeries, reports Karen Weintraub for WBUR CommonHealth. “The post-surgical wound-healing response somehow releases…cells that have already spread to distant sites in the body,” explains Prof. Robert Weinberg, “releasing them from the constraints that have previously prevented them from growing actively.”
Jenny Anderson of Quartz describes a new study from MIT’s McGovern Institute and others showing that back-and-forth banter proved much more predictive of a child’s language development than the number of words spoken to them. “[MIT graduate student Rachel] Romeo and her colleagues believe that these conversational turns help to actually rewire and grow kids’ brains,” writes Anderson.
MIT researchers have “discovered a slight difference in how humans produce the building blocks of DNA compared to how bacteria does it,” writes Fiona McMillan for Forbes. The comparison of human and bacterial enzymes “bodes well for the possible development of new antibiotics,” explains McMillan.
Researchers have found a way to reactivate the gene that causes fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited form of intellectual impairment. “The team used an emerging technique called “epigene-editing”,” writes Alice Klein for New Scientist, which is reversible. “That means any off-target effects could be fixed and wouldn’t be passed to future generations.”