Research

For a problem that has no doubt been around as long as humans have been falling on hard objects and bashing one another's skulls with clubs, brain injuries are still surprisingly mysterious. Scientists, including a cadre at the University of Pennsylvania, are lifting the veil, though, and what they're seeing is already "dramatically" changing American sports, said Douglas Smith, who heads Penn's Center for Brain Injury and Repair. Everyone from parents to pro athletes to military leaders is suddenly paying more attention to "mild" brain injuries, or concussions, and their long-term consequences.

A quadruple-dose flu vaccine for the elderly also provides better protection for people with HIV, researchers reported Tuesday in the first of several studies to publish results of high-dose vaccine for people with compromised immune systems. The team of researchers from Philadelphia institutions will ask a federal advisory committee to recommend high-dose vaccination for HIV-positive people, said Pablo Tebas, an infectious-diseases physician at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and senior author of the paper in Annals of Internal Medicine.

ROME - Rita Levi-Montalcini, a biologist who conducted underground research in defiance of Fascist persecution and went on to win a Nobel Prize for helping unlock the mysteries of the cell, died at her home in Rome on Sunday. She was 103 and had worked well into her final years. Italy's so-called "Lady of the Cells," a Jew who lived through anti-Semitic discrimination and the Nazi invasion, became one of her country's leading scientists and shared the Nobel medicine prize in 1986 with American biochemist Stanley Cohen for their groundbreaking research carried out in the United States.

Elwood Jensen, 92, an award-winning professor nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for work that opened the door to advances in fighting cancer, died Sunday of pneumonia, the University of Cincinnati said. He was nominated multiple times for the Nobel Prize for his discovery of hormone receptors while at the University of Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s. The discovery has helped doctors treat breast, thyroid, and prostate cancer. Dr. Jensen won dozens of other awards for his work, including a Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, a prize that is considered America's Nobel.

Janney Capital Markets is betting on a drug-industry revival. The Philadelphia investment bank last week hired a team of dealmakers and stock analysts from bankrupt San Francisco stock-trading and research firm ThinkEquity L.L.C. to hunt for deals and profit among emerging pharmaceutical firms, medical device-makers, and biotech developers. "Philadelphia and the surrounding area is a hub for health-care companies. It provides a lot of growth product for our sales and trading team, and it's an area of investment banking where we collectively think we can compete, with the right team," said Christopher White , head of investment banking at Janney.

A post-doctoral researcher suffered minor injuries when an oxygen tank ruptured during an experiment Wednesday night at Rowan University in Glassboro. The victim, whose name and age were not released, was treated for facial cuts at the scene by medics and taken as a precaution to Kennedy Hospital in Washington Township, where she was examined and released, said Joe Cardona, the university spokesman. The tank ruptured around 8:30 in the Science Hall. Cardona said he did not know the nature of the experiment.

Linda Creed, one of the best songwriters in Philadelphia history, wrote the lyrics to "The Greatest Love of All" two weeks after a mastectomy. "The lyrics take on a completely different meaning when you realize this," said Lisa Brownstein, who founded the Linda Creed Breast Cancer Foundation a year after her friend's death in 1986. For example: No matter what they take from me They can't take away my dignity. Whitney Houston sang the song to the top of the charts as Creed lay dying.

Elizabeth M. Haines, 98, a former Moorestown resident and research chemist before women generally landed such jobs, died of heart failure on Nov. 8 at Medford Leas, a retirement community where she had lived for 28 years. Mrs. Haines was one of the first women to work for the DuPont Co. as a research chemist. She was descended from William Matlack, who landed in Burlington in 1677. He became a farmer and landowner with a wife and nine children. Born in a home on Moorestown's Main Street in 1914, Mrs. Haines told family she could recall the predawn procession of horse-drawn farm wagons, laden with tomatoes, en route to the Campbell Soup Co. factory in Camden.

To hear his family tell it, Irvin Gerson was a force of nature. "Everyone he met, he had an influence on," said his wife, Rosalie. "He didn't shake hands and say hello - he took over their lives. " Dr. Gerson, a longtime family practitioner, neurological researcher, and faculty member at Jefferson Medical College, died at his Bala Cynwyd home early Thursday, Oct. 18, after a brief illness. He was 93 - and, his family said, checking in at the office until the end. They said they were proud of Dr. Gerson's achievements.

In a significant departure from industry practice, GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C., said it would make available to outside researchers the raw but anonymous patient data from clinical trials for drugs it has developed or discontinued, and its tuberculosis compound library. Pharmaceutical companies generally don't divulge such information, claiming that it is a proprietary secret. "As a truly global health care company, I believe we have a responsibility to do all we can at GSK to use our resources, knowledge and expertise to help tackle serious global health challenges," Glaxo chief executive Andrew Witty said in a statement.