Researchers at Northeastern University are asking people to download an app that will help them understand how, exactly, we communicated and connected in the aftermath of a tragedy. Did we call the people we are in touch with most frequently, or were we flooded with voicemails and messages from people we haven’t spoken to in weeks? Read full story

Harvard University researchers have for the first time replicated in a tiny, bug-like robot the agility of the common fly. With a gossamer body of micro-scale electronics, the penny-sized robot can lift off, hover, and maneuver. Read full story

Two large research teams have produced exhaustive genomic studies that reveal the most detailed catalog yet of the mutations that drive two deadly cancers -- endometrial cancer and acute myeloid leukemia.  Read full story

A telltale jaw fragment unearthed from a 75 million-year-old rock formation in Big Bend, Texas, has led to the identification of a new dinosaur species, Leptorhynchos gaddisi.  Read full story

Harvard University has received a $50 million gift from businessman and alumnus Len Blavatnik to support a major initiative aimed at bridging the “valley of death” — the gap between basic biomedical research and the emergence of new therapies for patients.The gift from the Blavatnik Family Foundation, slated to be announced Monday, is one of the largest individual gifts to the university in recent years.It is especially welcome because it comes as researchers are being squeezed by cuts in federal funding. Harvard Medical School announced last week that economic pressures led it to shut down its half-century old primate research facility in Southborough. “This is really, really meaningful in this context, as we’ve all confronted or are challenged by the sequester,” said Isaac T. Kohlberg, chief technology development officer at Harvard. Read full story

Harvard University researchers have discovered a naturally-occurring hormone in mice that increases the number of precious, insulin-producing cells found in the pancreas -- the beta cells lost during diabetes.  Read full story

Scientists have sequenced a primitive-looking fish called the coelacanth. The coelacanth has long been known by a popular nickname that makes biologists wince -- the “living fossil.”  Read full story

The Harvard primate research center where four monkeys died because of animal care problems will be largely shut down by 2015, Harvard Medical School announced Tuesday afternoon. The university cited a tough economic climate for biomedical research funding and shifting long-term strategic plans. The announcement stunned outside researchers, because it comes a year and a half after Harvard began investing significant time and resources into the New England Primate Research Center in Southborough, to correct animal care and oversight problems. Read full story

It’s an argument frequently made by businesses: intellectual property protection is essential to spur the sort of innovation that results in new drugs and technologies. But is it true? A new study of two sets of genes sequenced during the Human Genome Project a decade ago suggest that even relatively modest intellectual property rights protecting gene sequences reduces scientific research and product development by 20 to 30 percent.  Read full story

Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital announced Sunday an important advance in the effort to build replacement organs: a bioengineered rat kidney that, when transplanted into a living animal, was capable of producing urine.Years of research remain before scientists even contemplate testing such a transplant in a person, but the team plans in the next month to take a step toward the goal, transplanting bioengineered pig kidneys into live animals to see if they will function. “If you put the organs side by side, it would be hard to tell which is the bioengineered organ and which is the real organ,” said Dr. Joren Madsen, director of the Mass. General Transplant Center, who plans to collaborate with the team on the pig trials. Read full story