Allessandra DiCorato, Ph.D.

It’s fall marathon season, which for many runners means it’s also shin splints season. Whether you’re a beginner or have several races under your belt, the injury can be debilitating.Shin splints manifest as pain along the tibia or shin bone, and they are among the most common running injuries. Most people get them if they’re new to the sport or after ramping up their mileage. But you can also get shin splints if you incorporate hills or speed workouts without building up to them first, or by ru...

Scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Harvard Medical School, and McLean Hospital have discovered a surprising mechanism by which the inherited genetic mutation known to cause Huntington’s disease leads to the death of brain cells. The findings change the understanding of the fatal neurodegenerative disorder and suggest potential ways to delay or even prevent it.
For 30 years, researchers have known that Huntington’s is caused by an inherited mutation in the Huntingtin (HTT) gene...

I’d always thought that moving to Boston would be like coming home. Chicago, where I’d spent the previous six years in grad school, had felt overlarge and wide, like a borrowed coat that had warmed to my shape but never really fit. I’d come to love my neighborhood, even the winters, but the city’s sprawling streets never really felt like mine. Boston, by contrast, was as dense as the New England I’d known as a child, the highway leading to it forest-lined and familiar. I’d looked forward to movi...

In 2003, during Europe’s worst heat wave in centuries, almost 15,000 people died in France. About three-quarters of those deaths occurred indoors, and approximately 80% of the people who died were over 75, an age at which people tend to be less capable of perceiving heat and less well-equipped to adapt to it.

In the coming years of mounting climate change, people around the world — particularly older adults — are expected to be similarly vulnerable. But though scientists know a lot about heat,...