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PANDEMIC RESPONDERS The Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine has been tapped by the U.S. Agency for International Development to participate in a global project to control infectious diseases—such as avian flu and H1N1—that animals transmit to people.
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NEW MEDICAL DEAN Michael Rosenblatt, the dean of Tufts School of Medicine for six years, has stepped down from his post to become executive vice president and chief medical officer at the pharmaceutical giant Merck & Company. The school’s vice dean, Harris Berman, has been appointed interim dean.
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STIMULUS FUNDING Scientists throughout Tufts have secured a total of $16.9 million in funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. During the second year of the program that figure is expected to reach $30 million.
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MINING ANCIENT TEXTS The Tufts classicist Gregory Crane is leading an international team of researchers in exploring how humanities scholars can use data analysis to track topics concerning the Greco-Roman world as they appear in a million documents spanning thousands of years. The Digging into Data project “will enable a new generation of undergraduate research in the classics and the humanities,” says Crane.
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DENTAL EXPANSION The expansion of Tufts School of Dental Medicine in one of Boston’s most densely populated neighborhoods was celebrated during dedication ceremonies in November. “It makes me want to go back to dental school,” Seth Paparian, D86, said of the project that added five floors and 95,000 square feet to the building in the heart of Chinatown.
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SEE FOOD Diets high in the omega-3 fatty acids found in oily fish may afford protection against age-related macular degeneration, a common cause of vision loss in people over age sixty, according to a study done at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts.
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MEMORY RESEARCH The Tufts neuroscientist Leon Reijmers is working to identify the genes and proteins involved in how we form memories, and then figure out what happens on the cellular level when they fade. The research could lead to new treatments for memory loss as well as post-traumatic stress disorder patients.
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VIETNAMESE EDUCATION REFORM Tufts’ biology department is helping to modernize curriculum at the Hanoi University of Science as part of a reform program to make Vietnamese students more competitive.
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MORE NEWS Keep up with all the latest Tufts news and events at news.tufts.edu. And don’t forget to check out Tufts’ new homepage at www.tufts.edu.