Focus: Hidden - Maryland

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Over 1,500 scientists from 30 countries and 46 states will attend next week's 56th Annual Drosophila Research Conference organized by the Genetics Society of America (GSA), March 4–8 in Chicago, IL. The conference will feature close to 1,000 presentations (including 170 talks) describing cutting-edge research on genetics, developmental biology, cancer, stem cells, neurology, epigenetics, genetic disease, aging, immunity, behavior, drug discovery, and technology. It is the largest meeting in the world that brings together researchers who use the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to study biology.

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Scientists at Janelia Research Campus have identified a neural circuit that connects motor planning to movement.

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A new clinical trial to obtain safety and efficacy data on the investigational drug, ZMapp, as a treatment for the Ebola virus, was launched today by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in partnership with the Liberian government. Scientists from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) will play a role in the evaluation.

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Underage drinkers of flavored alcoholic beverages who exclusively consume the supersized versions are more than six times as likely to report suffering alcohol-related injuries compared to underage youth who drink other types of alcoholic beverages, according to a new study.

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A new study by a Johns Hopkins Carey Business School researcher shows that people might abandon their moral objections to organ selling – and to other transactions in repugnant markets ─ when presented with information about the potential advantages of such sales.

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A preliminary study conducted by researchers funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) may improve our prediction of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI).

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A study published in JAMA Psychiatry examines suicidal ideation and psychotic experiences among more than 11,000 adults who were 18 and older. The data were drawn from a large general-population based sample of U. S. households households identified through the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (2001-2003).

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New research in the journal Obesity provides the first glimpse of weight-gain guidance for pregnant women with various classes of obesity based on body mass index (BMI), and suggests that they not gain any weight until mid-pregnancy or later.

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Carrying a cup of coffee can be precarious for a sleepy-eyed caffeine addict who might accidentally send a wave of java sloshing over the rim, but add some foam and the trip becomes easier. New research shows that just a few layers of bubbles can significantly dampen the sloshing motion of liquid, and it may have applications far beyond breakfast beverages, including the safer transport of liquefied gas in trucks and propellants in rocket engines.

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Researchers have pinpointed a region in the human genome associated with peanut allergy in U.S. children, offering strong evidence that genes can play a role in the development of food allergies.

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Newly developed tiny antennas, likened to spotlights on the nanoscale, offer the potential to measure food safety, identify pollutants in the air and even quickly diagnose and treat cancer, according to the Australian scientists who created them. In the Journal of Applied Physics, they describe these and other envisioned applications for their nanocubes in "laboratories-on-a-chip."

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A group of researchers in Tunisia and Algeria show how fuzzy logic has helped them create an ideal photovoltaic system that obeys the supply-and-demand principle and its delicate balance. They describe this new sizing system of a solar array and a battery in a standalone photovoltaic system in The Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy.

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Five major independent Maryland-based health systems with a combined total of ten hospitals have formalized an agreement to create the Advanced Health Collaborative, LLC, (AHC) an organization that will offer its members the ability, without merger, to share ideas and explore opportunities to enhance the quality of health care, reduce costs and improve the health of people in the State of Maryland – a concept known as the “Triple Aim.”

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Superconductor materials are prized for their ability to carry an electric current without resistance, a valuable trait crippled or lost when electrons swirl into tiny tornado-like formations called vortices. To keep supercurrents flowing at top speed, scientists have figured out how to constrain troublesome vortices by trapping them within extremely short, ultra-thin nanowires.

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Working with cells taken from children with a very rare but ferocious form of brain cancer, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientists have identified a genetic pathway that acts as a master regulator of thousands of other genes and may spur cancer cell growth and resistance to anticancer treatment.

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Public health experts have long known that tobacco smoke exposure (TSE) can be harmful for children with bronchopulmonary dysplasia, a lung disease that often accompanies premature birth.

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Competition among doctors’ offices, urgent care centers and retail medical clinics in wealthy areas of the U.S. often leads to an increase in the number of antibiotic prescriptions written per person, a team led by Johns Hopkins researchers has found.

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At a relatively small cost, elders could be made more self-reliant and healthy and also less depressed, suggest the preliminary findings of a home-intervention pilot led by Sarah L. Szanton of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.

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Post-Acute Physician Partners, LLC (PAPP) is a new enterprise that will focus on delivering quality care for patients after a hospital stay.

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AMP presented at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration public workshop, “Optimizing FDA’s Regulatory Oversight of Next Generation Sequencing Diagnostic Tests,” outlining specific ways that FDA could best facilitate innovation of precision medicine. The purpose of the workshop is to discuss and receive feedback from the community on FDA’s regulatory approach to diagnostic tests for human genetics or genomics using NGS technology.

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A recent Lancet series explores various international efforts to address obesity, and calls for public health and policy approaches to improve the food environment as it relates to obesity treatment and prevention. The Obesity Society supports ongoing dialogue and collaborative discussions with the food industry, other industry stakeholders and public health officials, and calls for developing evidence-based initiatives to improve public health.

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Clinical and basic science experts from around the world will convene for the 10th Annual Amygdala, Stress and PTSD Conference, sponsored by the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress, in collaboration with the USU Departments of Psychiatry and Family Medicine, the USU Neuroscience Program, and the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center Department of Psychiatry, Apr. 21.

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A researcher from Johns Hopkins Medicine helped lead colleagues from across the country in a government-sponsored study by the Diabetic Retinopathy Clinical Research Network to discover that three drugs ― Eylea, Avastin and Lucentis ― used to treat diabetic macular edema are all effective. They also discovered that Eylea outperformed the other two drugs when vision loss was moderate to severe.

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Astronomers have used the Hubble Space Telescope to take the most detailed picture to date of a large, edge-on, gas-and-dust disk encircling the 20-million-year-old star Beta Pictoris. The new image traces the disk in closer to the star to within about 650 million miles of the star. Join the live Hubble Hangout at 3pm (EST) today (Feb. 19) to learn even more about Beta Pictoris and the Hubble telescope. Visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuaQEOTqm0c .

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Like a surgeon separating conjoined twins, cells have to be careful to get everything just right when they divide in two. Otherwise, the resulting daughter cells could be hobbled, particularly if they end up with too many or two few chromosomes. Successful cell division hangs on the formation of a dip called a cleavage furrow, a process that has remained mysterious. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that no single molecular architect directs the cleavage furrow’s formation; rather, it is a robust structure made of a suite of team players.

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Public health researchers have analyzed soda consumption data in order to characterize people’s exposure to a potentially carcinogenic byproduct of some types of caramel color. Caramel color is a common ingredient in colas and other dark soft drinks. The results show that between 44 and 58 percent of people over the age of six typically have at least one can of soda per day, possibly more, potentially exposing them to 4-methylimidazole (4-MEI), a possible human carcinogen formed during the manufacture of some kinds of caramel color.

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What is happening in the brain of an actor reciting Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy or of the person next to you at lunch saying, “Please pass the salt”? For 150 years, scientists have known that a brain region called Broca’s area plays a key role in speech production, but exactly what it does and how it does it have been a mystery.

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Four Web-based training modules developed by Johns Hopkins Medicine for emergency department personnel who treat patients with infectious diseases are now available on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.

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Chinese researchers have developed a simple, rapid device for detecting volatile organic compounds on the breath, demonstrating potential for early cancer detection

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In an attempt to address the significant problem of childhood obesity in the United States territory, Puerto Rican officials have proposed a $500 - $800 fine for parents whose children have obesity and have not improved after parent-focused education. While some public and pediatric health organizations have called the bill “unfair,” The Obesity Society (TOS) and The Obesity Action Coalition (OAC) go further to call it a misguided policy that ignores the core scientific understanding of obesity as a disease.

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WHO: More than 14,000 biomedical researchers from industry, government, nonprofits, the private sector and academia WHAT: Experimental Biology, the convergence of six scientific societies’ annual meetings WHEN: March 28 – April 1, 2015 WHERE: Boston Convention and Exhibition Center

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Most “risk calculators” used by clinicians to gauge a patient’s chances of suffering a heart attack and guide treatment decisions appear to significantly overestimate the likelihood of a heart attack, according to results of a study by investigators at Johns Hopkins and other institutions.

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Researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) have isolated a peptide, a type of biological molecule, which binds strongly to lithium manganese nickel oxide (LMNO), a material that can be used to make the cathode in high performance batteries. The peptide can latch onto nanosized particles of LMNO and connect them to conductive components of a battery electrode, improving the potential power and stability of the electrode.

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Mechanosensation is one of our fundamental physiological processes, on par with sight and smell, but how it works on a cellular level remains poorly understood, holding back development of effective treatments for mechanosensory disorders like chronic pain. Now, a team of researchers has identified a new model organism that may help elucidate the cellular mechanisms behind mechanosensation: the ordinary duck.

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Food dyes can give cakes, candy and sodas brilliant colors of the rainbow. Now a team of food scientists at Rutgers University in New Jersey has found that food coloring may be able to play more than its traditional esthetic role in food presentation.

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Researchers have reversed some of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in mice using magnetic resonance (MR) imaging-guided focused ultrasound.

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Editor's Note: For more about the New Voices Fellowship, visit www.aspennewvoices.org or email [email protected]. Follow all the fellows on Twitter here and the fellowship at @aspennewvoices.

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On the heels of a year marked by bold zero deforestation commitments the first ever comprehensive ranking of the powerbrokers that control the global supply chains that drive over half of tropical deforestation finds that only a small minority are equipped to tackle this problem. Deforestation and land use change cause more than 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, undermine regional water security, and threaten the livelihoods of more than one billion people worldwide.

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Incredibly tough, slightly stretchy spider silk is a lightweight, biodegradable wonder material with numerous potential biomedical applications. But although humans have been colonizing relatively placid silkworms for thousands of years, harvesting silk from territorial and sometimes cannibalistic spiders has proven impractical. Instead, labs hoping to harness spider silk's mechanical properties are using its molecular structure as a template for their own biomimetic silks.

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Knowing how cells exert force and sense mechanical feedback in their microenvironment is crucial to understanding how they activate a wide range of cellular functions, such as cell reproduction, differentiation and adhesion. Now a more fine-grained picture of adhesion mechanics is emerging, thanks to a new tool developed in Illinois in recent years called a "tension gauge tether," which allows scientists to measure cell mechanics at the single-molecule level.

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A new multiferroric film keeps its electric and magnetic properties even when highly curved, paving the way for potential uses in wearable devices

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For more than a decade, a vial of rare snake venom refused to give up its secret formula for lethality; its toxins had no effect on the proteins that most venoms target. Finally, an international team of researchers figured out its recipe: a toxin that permanently activates a crucial type of nerve cell protein, preventing the cells from resetting and causing deadly seizures in prey.

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Story ideas on classical music, dance and music education from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.

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The Consortium for Health and Military Performance’s Human Performance Resource Center (HPRC) at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) today announced an important new partnership created to provide robust educational resources designed to help service members understand and navigate the potential dangers associated with dietary supplements.

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NIBIB-funded researchers have developed a novel 3D vaccine that could provide a more effective way to harness the immune system to fight cancer as well as infectious diseases. The vaccine spontaneously assembles into a scaffold once injected under the skin and is capable of recruiting, housing, and manipulating immune cells to generate a powerful immune response. The vaccine was recently found to be effective in delaying tumor growth in mice.

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Applying lessons learned from autism to brain cancer, researchers have discovered why elevated levels of the protein NHE9 add to the lethality of the most common and aggressive form of brain cancer, glioblastoma. Their discovery suggests that drugs designed to target NHE9 could help to successfully fight the deadly disease.

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Not unlike an urban restaurant, the success of a bacterial cell depends on three things: localization, localization and localization. But the complete set of controls by which bacteria control the movement of proteins and other essential biological materials globally within the confines of their membrane walls has been something of a mystery. Now, researchers have parsed out the localization mechanisms that E. coli use to sort through and organize their subcellular components.