The day-to-day collaboration between the researchers in Public Health and Biostatistics at the School reveals unified topics that cut across many applications. This series of presentations introduces the topics that show empirically to be most important in these collaborations; and emphasizes concepts over details, through recent applications in Public Health.

Access Excellence, launched in 1993, is a national educational program that provides health, biology and life science teachers access to their colleagues, scientists, and critical sources of new scientific information via the World Wide Web. The program was originally developed and launched by Genentech Inc., and in 1999 joined the National Health Museum, a non-profit organization founded by former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop as a national center for health education. Access Excellence will form the core of the educational component of the National Health Museum Website that is currently under development. .

Roger Sabbadini, Ph.D., was the motivation behind this animation. The actin-myosin crossbridge system is complex, and we are really only speculating on the details in many ways. However, if a picture is worth a thousand words, this one second, 15 frame, animation is worth at least 15 thousand.

In this unit, aimed at teachers of Physical Education, we begin by looking at some of the common misconceptions relating to fitness and activity levels together with accepted definitions of these concepts. We consider how active young people should actually be, and discuss how PE teachers can ensure they are making an effective contribution to this area of public health.

Dr. Gloria White-Hammond (pediatrician) examines a young Latina child in an examining room. The child cries and White-Hammond comforts her, speaking in English and in Spanish. White-Hammond speaks to the child's mother about treatments for the child. White-Hammond examines the child with a stethoscope. Callie Crossley interviews White-Hammond about a program designed to increase the number of African American physicians across the nation. White-Hammond says that medical schools lack the financial, academic and other kinds of support necessary to retain some students. White-Hammond talks about the need for more minority physicians; White-Hammond says that minority physicians bring a 'sensitivity' to the treatment of minority patients.

Produced by the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, this guide summarizes the consequences of biodiversity loss for human health. The guide examines threats to global supplies of food and fresh water, exposure to formerly rare diseases and opportunistic infections, and loss of important sources of medicines.

Seminars exploring current research and topical issues in the biomedical sciences, addressed at the general theme of innovation. Seminars are organized in blocks with related content, and are presented by prominent outside speakers as well as by HST faculty members and graduate students. Each seminar block includes several semi-weekly presentations, in addition to wide-ranging discussions among speakers, faculty, and students. Discussions involve issues such as relations between presented research areas, requirements for further advances in the "state of the art", the role of enabling technologies, the responsible practice of biomedical research, and career paths in the biomedical sciences.

The objective of this subject is to teach the design of contemporary information systems for biological and medical data. These data are growing at a prodigious rate, and new information systems are required. This subject will cover examples from biology and medicine to illustrate complete life cycle information systems, beginning with data acquisition, following to data storage and finally to retrieval and analysis. Design of appropriate databases, client-server strategies, data interchange protocols, and computational modeling architectures will be covered. Students are expected to have some familiarity with scientific application software and a basic understanding of at least one contemporary programming language (C, C++, Java, Lisp, Perl, Python, etc.). A major term project is required of all students. Reading is assigned from the contemporary literature, and there is occasional homework.

An advanced course covering anatomical, physiological, behavioral, and computational studies of the central nervous system relevant to speech and hearing. Students learn primarily by discussions of scientific papers on topics of current interest. Recent topics include cell types and neural circuits in the auditory brainstem, organization and processing in the auditory cortex, auditory reflexes and descending systems, functional imaging of the human auditory system, quantitative methods for relating neural responses to behavior, speech motor control, cortical representation of language, and auditory learning in songbirds.

Physics Teaching for the 21st Century is a resource for teachers who are interested in teaching physics concepts in real world contexts.

The great problems of the 20th century were solved by a few incredibly smart people. The great problems of the 21st century will have to be solved by billions of moderately smart people. This is where teachers come in...

In this website you will find:

* articles that clearly explain the physics concepts in a real world context
* take-home experiments that can be done by students or by teachers as demonstrations in class
* lecture notes in the form of power point presentations
* multiple choice questions to use as a quick test of understanding during lectures, and as a way to stimulate critical thinking.
* problem sets and exam questions that would interest students (including solutions)
* data sheets with realistic numbers and information
* videos further explaining physics concepts in real world contexts

Care is needed at all stages of life. This unit makes care in the family its focus because the overwhelming majority of care, including health care, is supplied in families, much of it in private, much of it unnoticed and unremarked upon. The meaning of the term (informal carer) and the word (care) itself are explored.

Mechanical forces play a decisive role during development of tissues and organs, during remodeling following injury as well as in normal function. A stress field influences cell function primarily through deformation of the extracellular matrix to which cells are attached. Deformed cells express different biosynthetic activity relative to undeformed cells. The unit cell process paradigm combined with topics in connective tissue mechanics form the basis for discussions of several topics from cell biology, physiology, and medicine.

Covers cells and tissues of the immune system, lymphocyte development, the structure and function of antigen receptors, the cell biology of antigen processing and presentation including molecular structure and assembly of MHC molecules, lymphocyte activation, the biology of cytokines, leukocyte-endothelial interactions, and the pathogenesis of immunologically mediated diseases. Consists of lectures and tutorials in which clinical cases are discussed with faculty tutors. Details of the case covering a number of immunological issues in the context of disease are posted on a student Web site.

provides lessons for learning about the relationship between chemicals in the environment and human health. Topics include the science of toxicology, dose-response relationships, individual susceptibility, risk assessment, and environmental hazards. Students are introduced to the ever-changing nature of our understanding of how chemicals influence the health of living organisms.

These lesson plans, activities, and resources will help students understand how humans interact with the environment. This lesson requires students to either propose a solution to a current environmental issue that will improve the health of the system or analyze a historical situation in terms of the environment and propose a reasonable alternative that would have improved the health of the system.

Hope Kelly reports on the health care workers and patients at the Codman Square Health Center. Kelly notes that the health care workers at the Codman Square Health Center are not surprised at the rise in the infant mortality rate in Boston. She adds that many of the patients at the Center are immigrants and have no health insurance. Kelly interviews Bill Walczak (Codman Square Health Center), Dr. Tony Schlaff (head of the Codman Square Health Center), Dr. Graunke (pediatrician, Codman Square Health Center) and Cynthia Smith (head nurse, Codman Square Health Center). The four health care workers describe the challenges faced by poor women and children. Walczak says that many of the patients are in a perpetual state of crisis due to housing and transportation problems. Schlaff talks about the need for health education and pre-natal care for at-risk populations. Graunke talks about high rate of malnutrition in Codman Square. Smith talks about the rising rate of teen pregnancies. Kelly's report includes footage of health care workers and several patients at the center. Kelly's report also features footage of Dr. Graunke examining patients. Kelly notes that workers at the Center often treat children who have never received medical attention. This tape includes footage of Dr. Kenneth Edelin (Boston City Hospital), Juanita Wade (Boston School Committee), Charles Yancey (Boston City Council) and others at a press conference on the infant mortality rate. It also includes shots of newspaper articles about the rising infant mortality rate.

Students will learn how they can take one more step with recycling, and also learn more about nature’s version of recycling.
Materials needed:
Container for bin, hand rake or trowel for burying food waste, red worms, newspaper, leaves
and/or cardboard, and soil. See “tips”
for each procedure.

Why has it been easier to develop a vaccine to eliminate polio than to control influenza or AIDS? Has there been natural selection for a 'language gene'? Why are there no animals with wheels? When does 'maximizing fitness' lead to evolutionary extinction? How are sex and parasites related? Why don't snakes eat grass? Why don't we have eyes in the back of our heads? How does modern genomics illustrate and challenge the field? This course analyzes evolution from a computational, modeling, and engineering perspective. The course has extensive hands-on laboratory exercises in model-building and analyzing evolutionary data.

Introduces abstraction as an important mechanism for problem decomposition and solution formulation in the biomedical domain, and examines computer representation, storage, retrieval, and manipulation of biomedical data. Examines effect of programming paradigm choice on problem-solving approaches, introduces data structures and algorithms. Presents knowledge representation schemes for capturing biomedical domain complexity. Teaches principles of data modeling for efficient storage and retrieval. The final project involves building a medical information system that encompasses the different concepts taught in the subject.