Last fall, during a grim period for many of the nation’s hospitals and by any measure a stressful time for VUMC, we did something few institutions would. We held a community survey.

Size may not matter in a lot of things, but when it comes to cognitive decline, the size of the hippocampus definitely seems to be an issue.

The first word that Jessica Meyer thought of was “hope.” She and her friend, Alexandra, had just sat down with some paper and a box of crayons to spend an hour or so drawing holiday cards in between appointments at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt.

Using the same mechanism that causes evaporating coffee to leave a ring behind, an interdisciplinary team of Vanderbilt researchers is designing a simple blood test to diagnose malaria in the developing world without electricity or special training.

Vanderbilt biologists played an important supporting role in a major genetic study of malaria-carrying mosquitoes published this week in the journal "Science."