Month: February 2011

The legal debate over President Obama’s health care law – specifically whether the insurance requirement in the law goes beyond Congress’s authority and is thus unconstitutional – is likely to go to the Supreme Court. Vanderbilt University Law School and the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management have experts who can weigh in on the debate and the future of health care in America. Read More

Peter Hedera, M.D. Hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP), a group of progressive neurodegenerative disorders that impairs the ability to walk, can be caused by mutations in more than 40 different genes. Despite this genetic heterogeneity, the pathologic features – degeneration of long axons in the spinal cord – are relatively uniform,… Read More

Should you go for it on a fourth down? How NFL risks relate to business. Plus, jumping on the James Franklin bandwagon, and see how Vanderbilt remembers the iconic 1960s. [vucastblurb]… Read More

Watch video of the Feb. 2, 2011 Thinking Out of the Lunch Box event, “What Is the Meaning of the American Civil War on Its 150th Anniversary?” featuring Michael Kreyling, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English, and Richard Blackett, Andrew Jackson Professor of History. Robert Penn Warren wrote his book The Legacy of… Read More

13.1-Hour Dance Marathon benefits Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt Hundreds of Vanderbilt students will dance the night away Friday, Feb. 18, at the Student Recreation Center during the annual all-night Vanderbilt University Dance Marathon. A portion of the donations will help fund a new endowment to… Read More

In the past year, the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health has greatly expanded campus-wide programming, one that students are closely involved with shaping. “We have a very close relationship with the medical students and we are working to develop deeper and more significant relationships with students in other schools,” said… Read More

Researchers at Vanderbilt University are busy building the pharmacy of the future. On its shelves may be: • New medications for schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease, and the first drug treatment for Fragile X syndrome; • A drug that can stop a particularly vicious form of breast cancer in its tracks;… Read More

Parade All-Americans. Four-star standouts. Mr. Football recipients. All-State players galore. Talent in abundance. Welcome to James Franklin’s initial National Signing Day at Vanderbilt. “I can’t tell you how happy I am today,” Franklin said. “All of these young men have listened to our pitch – and have chosen to become… Read More

This month, things will change for the better in the Edgehill community, a neighborhood located a few blocks from the Vanderbilt campus. Healthy food will be more readily available to Edgehill’s low-income residents, thanks to an innovative “mobile grocery store” developed by second-year medical student Ravi Patel and initially inspired… Read More

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and across the globe, announced today a multi-national collaboration to discover and map all genes relating to Alzheimer’s disease through the formation of the International Genomics of Alzheimer’s Project (IGAP). Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive, neurodegenerative disorder that is fatal, has no cure and available… Read More

John Poindexter, a retired Vanderbilt administrator known for his devoted service to the university including efforts to preserve institutional history, has died. He was 85. Read More

Try asking any Monday morning quarterback about blown fourth-down play calls in the NFL and you are guaranteed passionate opinions. In most fourth-down plays, an NFL team will punt or try for a field goal. But, occasionally, teams decide to do something that is viewed as risky – attempt a… Read More

Caving expert John Hickman, who accompanies Bachmann on his underground expeditions, rappels down to the entrance of the Snail Shell Cave near Murfreesboro, Tenn Have you ever had the feeling that events beyond your control are working in your favor? That certainly seems to have been the case in the… Read More

The latest news about discoveries by Vanderbilt researchers is now available on a new online news channel, Research News @ Vanderbilt. Read More

School for Science and Math students Katie Roland, left, who attends Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet School, and Isaiah Bolden, who attends Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet High School, with the School for Science and Math’s director, Angela Eeds, Ph.D. (Mary Donaldson / Vanderbilt University) Report after report, it… Read More

Every few months, chemist Brian Bachmann sheds his white lab coat, collects his flashlight, helmet, surgical gloves and knotted rope, puts on old clothes and hiking boots and heads to a nearby cave. Bachmann, an assistant professor of chemistry at Vanderbilt, has combined his industrial experience in… Read More

Members of the Vanderbilt Trauma Survivors Network discuss the impact of traumatic brain injury at a recent peer panel discussion. (Photo by Mary Donaldson) Using Vanderbilt University’s Trauma Care Center as a case study, Owen Graduate School of Management professor Nancy Lea Hyer asks how operations management… Read More

Jonathan Haines and his colleagues at Vanderbilt are part of a global collaboration to discover and map all genes relating to Alzheimer's disease. (Daniel Dubois / Vanderbilt University) Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and across the globe, announced today a multi-national collaboration to discover and map all genes relating… Read More

David Gius, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues are studying an aging-associated protein’s role in the development of breast cancer in older women. (Vanderbilt University/photo by Mary Donaldson) The most common type of breast cancer in older women – estrogen and progesterone receptor (ER/PR) positive breast cancer – has been linked to… Read More

Physicist James Dickerson, left, and graduate student Saad Hasan (Photo by Daniel Dubois) Windshields that shed water so effectively that they don’t need wipers.  Ship hulls so slippery that they glide through the water more efficiently than ordinary hulls. These are some of the potential applications for graphene, one of… Read More