Two Boston hospitals make US News & World Report's latest Best Hospitals rankings look a little like "Partners and Everyone Else," to borrow a phrase from former Globe business columnist Steve Bailey.

That's because Partners stalwarts Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital are the only ones in the state to crack the magazine's 19-member Honor Roll. The distinction signifies hospitals that scored at or near the top in at least six of the list's 16 specialties. Pediatrics will have its own ranking in the fall.

Not that other hospitals didn't perform well. Our medical mecca's reputation is still intact with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, McLean Hospital, and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital all finishing in the top 10 of various specialties.

By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

Boston's three leading medical schools are among 14 nationwide that will receive federal grants aimed at helping scientists more quickly turn their discoveries into treatments for patients.

Under the program, Harvard Medical School has been awarded $117.7 million over the next five years, while Boston University Medical School will receive $23 million and Tufts University School of Medicine $20 million over that time period, the National Institutes of Health announced today.

The awards reflect a sea change in federal funding for scientific research. Schools that have traditionally competed within their own institutions for federal dollars must now form one collaborative center at each medical school to pull together all of its researchers and departments.

The mission of the grant program, called the Clinical and Translational Science Award, is to create a network of medical research institutions across the country that will translate new knowledge into tangible benefits for patients. Launched in 2006, the initiative has awarded money to 24 other medical schools. Total funding for the 14 new recipients will be $533 million over the next five years, the NIH said.

"Everybody knows there is a lot of great research going on but it doesn’t get to public practice," said Dr. Harry Selker, director of Tufts' new Clinical and Translational Science Institute. "This (grant program) is a big deal for the nation."

Joslin Diabetes Center has completed the sale of land in the Longwood Medical Area to developers who will build a research building in which Joslin and others will lease space, Joslin said today.

The parcel at the corner of Longwood and Brookline avenues was sold to a joint venture of Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc., National Development and Charles River Realty Investors. They will build a 350,000-square-foot building on the 1.1-acre site. Joslin will expand its research program into part of the new building, the diabetes center said.

The developers were expected to pay more than $100 million for the site, two existing buildings and development rights, according to sources quoted in a Globe story in July. The project is a departure from an earlier plan proposed in 2001 that would have combined housing and other uses for the project.

Construction on the new building, with an estimated cost of $300 million, will begin in 2008.

Two Massachusetts scientists are in the 2007 class of the W.M. Keck Foundation's Distinguished Young Scholars in Medical Research.

The Los Angeles philanthropy awards grants of up to $1 million each to five junior faculty members in the United States. Institutions make nominations by invitation only.

Amy Wagers (right) of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Joslin Diabetes Center and Harvard Medical School will study how to slow down or reverse the natural process of aging, which has potential implications for treating such age-related diseases as diabetes, immune deficiencies, muscle weakness and cancer, the foundation said.

Job Dekker (left) of University of Massachusetts Medical School will study how chromosomes are regulated by comparing cancer cells to normal cells, which may uncover defects that cause malignancy, potentially leading to advances in treating cancer, the foundation said.

Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital held on to their honor roll positions in the annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report called "America's Best Hospitals." Nine Boston hospitals are featured in the guide.

Mass. General finished fifth in the standings, down one rung from last year, and the Brigham took tenth place, up one from last year. Once again, Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Mayo Clinic finished first and second. UCLA Medical Center moved up to third from fifth and the Cleveland Clinic slipped to fourth from third.

The magazine evaluated 5,462 hospitals in 16 specialties, excluding pediatrics, and came up with 173 hospitals that met standards in one or more specialties based on reputation, care-related factors such as nursing and patient services, and mortality rate. Eighteen hospitals scored at or near the top in at least six specialties to make the honor roll.

Other hospitals were ranked in the specialty areas, but not in a cumulative score. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center was in the top 50 for 10 categories: diabetes (in conjunction with the Joslin Clinic); digestive disorders; respiratory care; heart and heart surgery; cancer care; kidney diseases; geriatrics; gynecology, urology; and ear, nose and throat care.

Boston-area hospitals known for their specialties also made the top 50. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute placed fifth in the list for cancer care. Joslin Clinic, with its partner Beth Israel Deaconess, was ranked 12th for endocrinology. New England Baptist Hospital was 17th for orthopedics and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital ranked eighth for rehabilitation. Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary placed fourth in ophthalmology and in the ear, nose and throat specialty.

Boston Medical Center was ranked 41st in geriatrics.

Mass. General's winning specialty areas were cancer; digestive disorders; ear, nose and throat; endocrinology; geriatrics; heart and heart surgery; gynecology; kidney disease; neurology and neurosurgery; orthopedics; respiratory disorders; urology; psychiatry; and rheumatology.

The Brigham's top specialties were cancer; digestive disorders; ear, nose and throat; endocrinology; geriatrics; gynecology; heart and heart surgery; kidney disease; neurology and neurosurgery; orthopedics; respiratory disorders; urology; and rheumatology.

Joslin Diabetes Center’s partnership with Walgreens is bringing it into pharmacies nationwide. Now the 10-month-old alliance is hitting the road.

Joslin’s name is going NASCAR, along with Walgreens and its co-sponsor in car racing, the drug company Eli Lilly. Logos from all three will grace a Ford Fusion driven for Carl A. Haas Motorsports by rookie driver Kyle Krisiloff. He’ll be racing Saturday in Loudon, N.H., as part of the NASCAR Busch Series.

The effort to drive awareness of diabetes is the first of its kind for NASCAR, according to Joslin. The clinic and research center is not paying for the sponsorship, spokeswoman Jenny Catherine Eriksen said.

Researchers led by a team at the Joslin Diabetes Center report in tomorrow's New England Journal of Medicine that tightly controlling blood sugar levels does not impair long-term cognitive function for people with type 1 diabetes.

Type 1 diabetics, whose immune systems destroy cells in the pancreas that make insulin, must monitor the level of sugar in their blood and inject insulin or use an insulin pump to keep down blood sugar. High levels can lead to such complications as blindness, heart disease and kidney failure.

Tight control of blood sugar, however, can unintentionally result in episodes of hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar levels. Hypoglycemia can lead to confusion, coma and convulsions. That has raised concerns that over time, hypoglycemia could cause long-term cognitive problems.

The Joslin study followed 1,441 type 1 diabetics for 12 years, following up on an earlier study of the same participants that showed that after 6 years, diabetics with tightly controlled blood sugar showed the same cognitive function as diabetics on less intensive therapy. The results after 18 years confirmed the earlier findings.

"While acute episodes of hypoglycemia can impair thinking and can even be life-threatening, type 1 diabetes patients do not have to worry that such episodes will impair their long-term abilities to perceive, reason and remember," Dr. Alan M. Jacobson, head of Joslin's behavioral and mental health research section and lead author of the study, said in a statement.

Dr. George L. King, director of research at Joslin Diabetes Center and co-director of Joslin's Asian American Diabetes Initiative, was sworn in today as a member of the state's new Asian American Commission in a State House ceremony.

King also heads vascular cell biology at Joslin and is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Joslin Diabetes Center has formed an affiliation with Frisbie Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.H., where it will offer educational programs for patients with diabetes, one-on-one education classes for those who are newly diagnosed, and diabetes information groups.

Joslin has 25 affiliated programs in the United States and two international affiliates in the Kingdom of Bahrain and Canada.

Researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center have identified a group of proteins that may cause blood vessels to leak in the eyes of people who have diabetic eye disease.

Edward Feener and his team report in Sunday's online edition of Nature Medicine on the molecules that may play a role in the two leading causes of vision loss among adults. Their work could have implications for blood vessel leakage and cerebral swelling involved in head injury or stroke.

Research money isn't what it used to be. Neither is the leadership of the Joslin Diabetes Center.

But Ranch C. Kimball, Joslin's first non-physician president and CEO, won "surprisingly positive" reviews from scientists when he made the rounds at the Harvard affiliate before being named. A memo summarizing the scientists' impressions of Kimball also said he had "obvious intellectual gifts and understood researchers' needs."

Kimball comes from the Romney administration, where he was secretary of economic development. He takes over from Dr. C. Ronald Kahn, who returned to full-time research in September.

"We realize this is probably an unusual choice of a president," said Dr. Steven E. Shoelson, a Joslin researcher and clinician. "I think it relates to the specific demands of the time. With NIH funding going down and more and more competition for research dollars, the board felt a specific need to strengthen our ability to compete for development dollars."