A group of Massachusetts researchers has successfully completed the first run of human trials of the latest artificial pancreas design—a development that will free type 1 diabetics from relying on daily insulin injections.

Excessive alcohol consumption in young women may increase the risk of benign breast disease at an early age, according to a Harvard Medical School study.

The person next to you yawns, and all of a sudden you can’t help but open your mouth, close your eyes, and take a gaping breath of air. It’s involuntary and seemingly contagious. Well yawning isn’t the only thing that’s contagious, apparently so is drinking. If you partied hard on Friday night, it is more likely that your close friends did too.

Providing financial incentives for positive behavior can lead to higher test scores among adolescents.

Harvard and MIT researchers received $2.1 million in grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last Thursday to study the effects of climate change on public health and local ecosystems.

Harvard has instituted a new policy that requires all science students conducting research to receive ethics training, University officials say.

With the recent creation of a separate office for research strategy, the Harvard School of Public Health was well equipped to handle the January revisions to the National Institutes of Health grant application process.

Earlier this year, Harvard’s two HIV/AIDS research centers in Africa each spun off limited liability companies, a strategic move that will open up funding streams that had previously been off-limits due to federal restrictions. For the 120,000 AIDS orphans living in Botswana, the potential funding increase could speed further advances in research as well as public health initiatives.

A study published yesterday in PLoS Medicine and led by Dariush Mozaffarian, an assistant professor of epidemiology at HSPH, showed that replacing saturated fats with a higher than previously recommended percentage of polyunsaturated fats was associated with a significantly decreased risk of coronary heart disease, the leading killer of adults in developing countries.

After winning the 2010 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize on Wednesday, inventor Erez Lieberman-Aiden will now have an additional $30,000 to pour into his creative efforts.