News Releases from Johns Hopkins

December 4, 2008. Teachers have a greater impact than new textbooks or computers when it comes to raising math scores, according to a comprehensive research review by the Johns Hopkins University School of Education's Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education.

December 4, 2008. The Johns Hopkins University is launching three new full-time engineering master's degree programs aimed at giving graduates a solid educational foundation and a competitive edge before they seek employment in private industry or government organizations.

December 3, 2008. The Hodson Trust this week awarded grants totaling $12 million to four Maryland colleges, bringing the total awarded over the life of the Trust to more than $210 million.

December 1, 2008. The Johns Hopkins University has received a $4.97 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to undertake the initial phase of a unique program aimed at improving health outcomes in Uganda and East Africa, in coordination with the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health, and the Makerere University College of Health Sciences in Kampala, Uganda.

December 1, 2008. Scientists at Johns Hopkins have determined how the characteristic shedding of fatty substances, or lipids, by ovarian tumors allows the cancer to evade the body’s immune system, leaving the disease to spread unchecked.

November 25, 2008. In human relationships, a certain "spark" often governs whether we prefer one person more than another, and critical first impressions can occur within seconds. A team lead by Johns Hopkins researchers has found that cell-to-cell "friendships" operate in much the same way and that dysfunctional bonding is linked to the spread of cancer.

November 18, 2008. Johns Hopkins University Campus Safety and Security in collaboration with the Baltimore Police Department, Planning Systems Inc. and iXP Corp., will demonstrate a new system that can detect and locate gunfire in the Charles Village area.

November 17, 2008. When atoms in a crystal are struck by laser light, their electrons, excited by the light, typically begin moving back and forth together in a regular pattern, resembling nanoscale soldiers marching in a lockstep formation. But according to a new theory developed by Johns Hopkins researchers, under the right conditions these atoms will rebel against uniformity.

November 17, 2008. For the second year in a row, a team of five international relations graduate students from the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) finished in first place out of 138 teams competing in the Sustainable Innovation Summit Challenge hosted by Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz.

November 12, 2008. Heart experts at Johns Hopkins have evidence that life-saving coronary angioplasty at community hospitals is safer when physicians and hospital staff have more experience with the procedure.

November 11, 2008. Ronald J. Daniels, the provost and chief academic officer of the University of Pennsylvania, was elected today as the 14th president of The Johns Hopkins University.

November 11, 2008. Naturally produced sex hormones may influence the risk and progression of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, Johns Hopkins researchers report in a recent study.

November 11, 2008. Taking a cue from the way drugs like Viagra put the biological brakes on a key enzyme involved in heart failure, scientists at Johns Hopkins have mapped out a key chemical step involved in blocking the enzyme.

November 9, 2008. A team of Johns Hopkins biochemists has identified a mixed bag of five key proteins out of thousands secreted into blood draining from the heart’s blood vessels that may together or in certain quantities form the basis of a far more accurate early warning test than currently in use of impending heart attack in people with severely reduced blood flow, or ischemia.

November 3, 2008. President William R. Brody sent a broadcast e-mail message to Johns Hopkins University faculty, students and staff on Monday, Nov. 3, regarding the impact on the university of the national economic situation. Here is the text of that message.

November 3, 2008. A call to explore a broader use of HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccines and the validation of a simple oral screening test for HPV-caused oral cancers are reported in two studies by a Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center investigator.

November 3, 2008. A study among Baltimore inner-city teenage girls treated for pelvic inflammatory disease shows they are highly vulnerable to subsequent sexually transmitted infections (STI) — sometimes within a few weeks or months of their treatment.

October 28, 2008. Johns Hopkins researchers have found strong evidence supporting the view that the sleeping mind functions the same as the waking mind, a discovery that could significantly alter basic understanding of the normal and abnormal brain.

October 28, 2008. Giving children with milk allergies increasingly higher doses of milk over time may ease, and even help them completely overcome, their allergic reactions, according to the results of a study led by the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and conducted jointly with Duke University.

October 27, 2008. A team of Johns Hopkins University neuroscientists has discovered patterns of brain activity that may underlie our remarkable ability to see and understand the three-dimensional structure of objects.

October 27, 2008. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have been selected to lead a new national survey of older Americans to understand patterns of disability and aging.

October 23, 2008. A team of chemists at The Johns Hopkins University has created water-soluble electronic materials that spontaneously assemble themselves into "wires" 10,000 times smaller than a human hair.

October 21, 2008. Graduate students and instructors from Peking University (PKU) visited the Johns Hopkins University's master of science in bioscience regulatory affairs program on September 29th to broaden their understanding of bioscience product development, quality assurance, and international regulatory affairs.

October 21, 2008. The Johns Hopkins Quality and Safety Research Group (QSRG), led by award-winning patient safety researcher Peter Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., has received gifts worth more than $2 million to expand efforts to further reduce central line-associated bloodstream infections in hospital intensive care units.

October 21, 2008. The rate of suicide in the United States is increased for the first time in a decade, according to a new report from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Injury Research and Policy.

October 20, 2008. Social environment may play a greater role in the disparity between the numbers of African Americans living with hypertension compared to non-Hispanic whites with the disease.

October 19, 2008. This week, Johns Hopkins researchers report that transplanting a new line of stem cell-like cells into rat models of the disease clearly shifts key signs of neurodegenerative disease in general and ALS in particular — slowing the animals' neuron loss and extending life.

October 17, 2008. For stories about the 2008 presidential campaign, consider the following sources from The Johns Hopkins University.

October 14, 2008. The Johns Hopkins University has entered into a partnership that will enable Tulane University undergraduates to obtain engineering degrees in four study areas that were eliminated from Tulane's curriculum when that university restructured after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

October 13, 2008. Tracey A. Reeves, a former reporter and editor at The Washington Post, has been appointed director of news and information at The Johns Hopkins University.

October 9, 2008. Working with genetically engineered mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins have shown that daily doses of a standardized extract from the leaves of the ginkgo tree can prevent or reduce brain damage after an induced stroke.

October 9, 2008. Jonathan Links, PhD, professor and director of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Public Health Preparedness, has been awarded a five-year $7,663,066 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to study disaster preparedness risks and needs for vulnerable populations.

October 7, 2008. Kenneth D. Karlin, Ira Remsen Professor of Chemistry at The Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded the American Chemical Society's 2009 F. Albert Cotton Award in Synthetic Inorganic Chemistry and has been chosen by the Sierra Nevada section of the ACS to receive the 2009 Sierra Nevada Distinguished Chemist Award.

October 7, 2008. Yesterday, at 4:40 am EDT, MESSENGER successfully completed its second flyby of Mercury, and its cameras captured more than 1,200 high-resolution and color images of the planet — unveiling another 30 percent of Mercury’s surface that had never before been seen by spacecraft.

October 7, 2008. A critical care specialist at Johns Hopkins who has reviewed recent studies of intensive care unit (ICU) patients and data from The Johns Hopkins Hospital concludes that the routine use of deep sedation and bed rest in ICU patients may be causing unnecessary and long-term physical impairment and poor quality of life after hospital discharge.

October 6, 2008. In October's Great Ideas Podcast, Mary Jo Salter, a poet and a professor in the Writing Seminars, discusses poetry’s past and present, including how the Internet is lending an immediacy to the genre.

October 3, 2008. in the National Children’s Study.

October 2, 2008. A team of researchers from the United States and the Netherlands has identified mutations in three genes that are associated with high levels of uric acid in the blood, which is a risk factor for gout.

October 1, 2008. Carol Greider, Ph.D., Daniel Nathans Professor and director of molecular biology and genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will share the 100,000 euro 2009 Paul Erlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize with Elizabeth Blackburn, Ph.D., of the University of California, San Francisco for their “discovery of telomeres and telomerase and the elucidation of their significance for cell division and cell aging.”

October 1, 2008. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has awarded nearly $3 million for a contract aimed at reducing central line-associated bloodstream infections in hospital intensive care units (ICUs) to a consortium made up of Johns Hopkins and the Michigan Health & Hospital Association (MHA).

September 30, 2008. A program that helps Johns Hopkins Institutions employees buy homes in select Baltimore City neighborhoods near Hopkins campuses is expanding, making available grants up to nearly seven times larger than before.

September 24, 2008. Baltimore-area undergraduate and graduate students with an interest in solving urban problems have an opportunity to test their ideas, be recognized by city decision makers and win up to $4,000 by entering the 2009 Abell Award in Urban Policy competition.

September 24, 2008. Johns Hopkins scientists who have spent decades researching the effects of caffeine report that a slew of caffeinated energy drinks now on the market should carry prominent labels that note caffeine doses and warn of potential health risks for consumers.

September 23, 2008. Two Johns Hopkins University professors — a physician who champions scientifically rigorous, common-sense approaches to improving patient safety and an astrophysicist who was a leader in the discovery of the universe's "dark energy" — were named today as winners of MacArthur Fellowships, the so-called "genius grants."

September 23, 2008. Acclaimed novelist Chimamanda Adichie, an alumna of The Johns Hopkins University, is one of 25 scholars, scientists and artists this year to win a MacArthur Fellowship, a $500,000 "no strings attached" award given to people who demonstrate exceptional creativity and promise in their chosen field.

September 23, 2008. A heart expert at Johns Hopkins is calling for all women with a waistline measuring more than 35 inches to get an annual check-up and detailed risk assessment for heart problems because excess abdominal fat, even in the mildly obese and overweight, leads more than a third of women to underestimate their lifetime risk of having a heart attack, stroke or chest pain (angina.)

September 22, 2008. Ralph Fessler, the inaugural dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Education and a state and national leader in teacher education, will retire at the end of the 2008-2009 academic year, he announced today.

September 22, 2008. Two Johns Hopkins — researchers a physician whose squirrel hibernation studies may lead to new treatments for muscle-wasting diseases, and an engineer who is building medical tools smaller than a speck of dust — have received prestigious 2008 New Innovator Awards, the National Institutes of Health announced today.

September 22, 2008. A study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows the nation’s top newspapers have largely overlooked the food system as one of the more important contributors to global climate change.

September 19, 2008. Johns Hopkins investigators report the discovery of master controllers of a gene critical to human and all mammalian development by trawling, implausibly enough, through anonymous genetic sequences using tiny zebrafish embryos.

September 19, 2008. Weekly bouts of moderate aerobic exercise on a bike or treadmill, or a brisk walk, combined with some weightlifting, may cut down levels of fat in the liver by up to 40 percent in people with type 2 diabetes, a study by physical fitness experts at Johns Hopkins shows.

September 17, 2008. Newborns can be protected from seasonal flu when their mothers are vaccinated during pregnancy, according to a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

September 16, 2008. Gene activity in prostate cancer is reminiscent of that in the developing fetal prostate, providing further evidence that all cancers are not equal, Johns Hopkins researchers report.

September 16, 2008. Johns Hopkins scientists report success in significantly suppressing levels of the “hunger hormone” ghrelin in pigs using a minimally invasive means of chemically vaporizing the main vessel carrying blood to the top section, or fundus, of the stomach.

September 16, 2008. The New York Times ran a story Sept. 16 featuring Krieger School of Arts and Sciences research that shows a link between "approximate number sense," the ability to quickly and accurately make numerical estimates, and ability in formal mathematics. They also posted an online feature allowing you to try your hand at the same task that was given to the teenagers who participated in the study.

September 15, 2008. The Johns Hopkins University performed $1.55 billion in science, medical and engineering research in fiscal year 2007, making it the leading U.S. academic institution in total research and development spending for the 29th year in a row, according to a new National Science Foundation ranking.

September 12, 2008. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine report in the July issue of Neuron how nerve cells in the brain ensure that Arc, a protein critical for memory formation, is made instantly after nerve stimulation.

September 12, 2008. The Johns Hopkins University is combining two of its strengths — brain research and teacher education — to give educators a better understanding of how young minds work and to offer ways to enhance learning.

September 9, 2008. MSNBC senior campaign correspondent Tucker Carlson will lead off the annual Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 9 at The Johns Hopkins University.

September 7, 2008. Knowing how precisely a high school freshman can estimate the number of objects in a group gives you a good idea how well he has done in math as far back as kindergarten, researchers at The Johns Hopkins University found.

September 4, 2008. The complete genetic blueprint for lethal pancreatic cancer and brain cancer was deciphered by a team at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

September 2, 2008. Students anywhere in the world can now earn a certificate in geographic information systems by taking courses online from The Johns Hopkins University.

August 28, 2008. A bear market isn't holding back the expansion of Stocks in the Future, an innovative financial literacy program that teaches students about investing while bolstering attendance and class participation.

August 26, 2008. America's nonprofit organizations are focusing on their missions to attract and retain the next generation of employees, according to a new report released today by the Johns Hopkins University Nonprofit Listening Post Project.

August 26, 2008. The National Network of Partnership Schools at The Johns Hopkins University has teamed up with schools across the country to share innovative and effective ways to involve parents in schools, help schools meet the needs of their families and encourage communities to form partnerships with schools and families.

August 25, 2008. The Johns Hopkins University will gear up for its 133rd academic year by welcoming the class of 2012 to the Homewood campus on Friday, Aug. 29, and Saturday, Aug. 30.

August 25, 2008. Award-winning legal affairs analyst Jeffrey Toobin will discuss how the composition of the Supreme Court will change under the next president at The Johns Hopkins University's 2008 Constitutional Forum, a discussion of important legal issues held in conjunction with the annual observance of Constitution Day.

August 18, 2008. Adjusting our behavior to changing circumstances enables us to achieve our goals. But how, exactly, do our brains switch so elegantly and quickly from one well-entrenched plan to a newer one in reaction to a sudden change in circumstances?

August 14, 2008. Aris Melissaratos, senior advisor to the president for enterprise development at The John Hopkins University, has been named 2008 winner of the Baltimore's Extraordinary Technology Advocate Award, the Greater Baltimore Technology Council announced.

August 11, 2008. Researchers at Johns Hopkins are reporting what is believed to be the most conclusive evidence to date that inadequate levels of vitamin D, obtained from milk, fortified cereals and exposure to sunlight, lead to substantially increased risk of death.

August 6, 2008. A Johns Hopkins expert in HIV and how the AIDS virus hides in the body says antiretroviral drugs have stopped HIV from replicating, the first of three key steps needed to rid people of the virus.

August 5, 2008. Johns Hopkins manners maven weighs in on China's Olympic civility effort. Could it work in the U.S.?

July 30, 2008. America's nonprofit organizations are widely involved in efforts to influence the public policies affecting them and those they serve, but are constrained by tight budgets, limited staff time and confusing legal restrictions, according to a new survey by the Johns Hopkins University Nonprofit Listening Post Project.

July 29, 2008. The Johns Hopkins University Engineering Programs for Professionals, EPP, have separated the management of their systems engineering and technical management education programs.

July 28, 2008. Most adults in the U.S. will be overweight or obese by 2030, with related health care spending projected to be as much as $956.9 billion, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

July 28, 2008. Engineering students at Johns Hopkins have invented a tool that would allow utility workers to disconnect power lines from residential transformers at a safe distance, beyond the range of dangerous electrical arcs.

July 28, 2008. The National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) has reappointed two scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to help lead nationwide research teams focused on the mental and cardiovascular risks associated with long-term spaceflight.

July 23, 2008. Victor Almon McKusick, M.D., University Professor of Medical Genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, one of the two distinguished Johns Hopkins geneticists for whom the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine was named, and a towering international figure in genetics research, diagnosis and treatment, died Tuesday, July 22 at home.

July 23, 2008. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Microsoft founder Bill Gates announced today that they are pledging a combined $500 million toward global antismoking efforts.

July 23, 2008. Mice with inflamed nasal tissue being tested at a Johns Hopkins laboratory may be unable to tell if something smells bad or good, but their sensory deficit is nothing to turn up a nose at.

July 22, 2008. Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered that the Notch protein helps human embryonic stem cells “decide” their own fate, a finding which may eventually be useful in programming cells for the development of stem cell therapies.

July 17, 2008. The name that graces some of the world’s top research, educational and medical institutions has a new place in space.

July 17, 2008. For stories about the 2008 presidential campaign, consider the following sources from The Johns Hopkins University. Listed with each source is a brief description of his or her area of expertise or particular take on the campaign.

July 16, 2008. A federal grant will allow Johns Hopkins researchers to purchase a powerful $2 million computer that will speed up their efforts to find new ways to diagnose and treat brain disease, heart illnesses, cancer and other medical ailments.

July 16, 2008. Mars once hosted vast lakes, flowing rivers and a variety of other wet environments that had the potential to support life, according to two new studies based on data from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) and other instruments on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

July 14, 2008. Which is easier to remember: 4432879960 or 443-297-9960? The latter, of course. Adults seem to know automatically, in fact, that long strings of numbers are more easily recalled when divided into smaller "bite-sized chunks," which is why we break up our telephone and Social Security numbers in this way.

July 11, 2008. The Johns Hopkins Hospital has once again — for the 18th consecutive time — earned the top spot in U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings of American hospitals, placing first in three medical specialties and very high in 12 others.

July 9, 2008. After more than 30 years in space, NASA’s Voyager 2 continues to make new discoveries and is upending our understanding of the processes at work at the very edges of the sun’s influence.

July 7, 2008. Washing hands with soap and water in preparation for delivery significantly reduced the risk of death for infants within the first month of life, according to a study in Nepal conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

July 7, 2008. A single, oral dose of vitamin A, given to infants shortly after birth in the developing world can reduce their risk of death by 15 percent, according to a study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

July 2, 2008. The Johns Hopkins University has established a formal research collaboration with Germany's Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, described as the largest organization for applied research in Europe.

June 30, 2008. Nonprofits in Maryland are growing their workforces nearly three times faster than the state's for-profit sector, according to a recent Johns Hopkins University study.

June 26, 2008. Political scientist Nicole Suveges was civilian Army contractor Nicole Suveges, a Johns Hopkins University graduate student in political science who was working in Iraq while doing research for her dissertation, was among four Americans killed in an explosion Tuesday in the offices of the district council in the critical Sadr City section of Baghdad.

June 23, 2008 Alfred Sommer, dean emeritus of The Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, has been elected chair of the board of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation,b a philanthropy that supports biomedical research aimed at conquering disease, improving human health and extending life.

June 19, 2008. Follow along online as Johns Hopkins University Egyptologist Betsy Bryan and her team of graduate students, artists, conservators and photographers expand their investigation of Mut Temple this summer, turning their attention to the temple's Sacred Lake.

June 17, 2008. Uncertainties about proper use and possible long-term effects of hydroxyurea in the treatment of sickle cell anemia may be wrongly influencing doctors to avoid prescribing it to those in serious need, according to results of a literature review by specialists at Johns Hopkins.

June 15, 2008. A team of AIDS experts at Johns Hopkins has found a simple mathematical equation that accurately explains how well each of 25 anti-HIV drugs in five commonly used drug groups suppresses the virus and keeps the disease in check.

June 14, 2008. Every year, about 500 million people worldwide are infected with the parasite that causes dysentery, a global medical burden that among infectious diseases is second only to malaria.

June 11, 2008. Johns Hopkins University's resident civility maven P.M. Forni takes the guesswork out of defusing more than a hundred different everyday hackle-raising scenarios in his new book, The Civility Solution: What to Do When People Are Rude (St. Martin's Press, June 10, 2008).

June 10, 2008. A short-term, very-high dose regimen of the immune-suppressing drug cyclophosphamide seems to slow progression of multiple sclerosis (MS) in most of a small group of patients studied and may even restore neurological function lost to the disease, Johns Hopkins researchers report.

June 10, 2008. A new study indicates that African Americans with a family history of colorectal cancer are less likely to be screened than African Americans at average risk for the disease.

June 4, 2008. Johns Hopkins University researchers and colleagues in China have unlocked some of the secrets of newly discovered iron-based high-temperature superconductors, research that could result in the design of better superconductors for use in industry, medicine, transportation and energy generation.

June 4, 2008. Hillary Clinton's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination effectively ended Tuesday night when Barack Obama earned the last handful of delegates necessary for a win. Research by Erika Falk, a communications expert at The Johns Hopkins University, shows that the media treated the two candidates differently from the start.

June 4, 2008. A Johns Hopkins astronomer is a member of a team briefing fellow scientists about plans to use new technology to take advantage of recent, promising ideas on where to search for possible extraterrestrial intelligence in our galaxy.