Focus: Hidden - Maryland

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Losing a single night’s sleep may affect the liver’s ability to produce glucose and process insulin, increasing the risk of metabolic diseases such as hepatic steatosis (fatty liver) and type 2 diabetes. The findings of the mouse study are published ahead of print in the American Journal of Physiology—Endocrinology and Metabolism. The research was chosen as an APSselect article for September.

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A new paper from Johns Hopkins APL Senior Fellow Dr. Paul Stockton examines how power companies can partner with the Department of Energy to defeat attacks on the U.S. electric system.

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Scientists seek to better understand protein folding to cure misfolding diseases, but this incredibly complex process requires sophisticated algorithms to identify the folding mechanisms. Computational biophysicists have proposed a new way to identify the most crucial factors for protein folding. They demonstrated the short simulation time of their approach on a small but intriguing protein, “GB1 beta-hairpin,” in The Journal of Chemical Physics.

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Titanium-based materials are widely used in medical implant technology, and coating the surface of titanium materials with biologically active molecules has recently shown promise to improve how cells adhere to implants and promote tissue regeneration. The mechanisms behind how peptides stick to titanium, however, are not fully understood. Researchers have now found how calcium ions present at the interface between titanium oxide and tissues affect how well peptides bind to the metal. The team reports their findings in Biointerphases.

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The personal papers of John Hanson Briscoe (1934-2014), former speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates and longtime St. Mary’s County lawyer and judge, will be preserved at St. Mary’s College of Maryland Archives.

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The recurrence plot is a vital tool for analyzing nonlinear dynamic systems, especially systems involving empirically observed time series data. RPs show patterns in a phase space system and indicate where data visit the same coordinates, and can mimic some types of inferential statistics and linear analyses. A paper in Chaos provides a proof of concept for using RPs to mimic the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, which scientists use to determine if two data sets significantly differ.

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In the first study of independent in-home use of a brain-computer interface by a group of advanced ALS patients, the BCI system was found to be reliable; and of the eight individuals who completed the study, seven chose to keep the device for future use.

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A Salisbury University student raised on Maryland's Eastern Shore has won one of the United States’ most prominent literary prizes. Emma DePanise, who grew up in Queenstown, MD, is winner of the 2018 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry.

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Flashes of brightness known as solar flares can be followed by coronal mass ejections that send plasma from the sun into space. These charged particles can then travel to Earth, and when they arrive they wreak havoc on Earth’s magnetic field. The result can be beautiful but also destructive: auroras and geomagnetic storms. In the journal Chaos, researchers report a method for analyzing magnetic field data that might provide better short-term forecasting of geomagnetic storms.

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Regardless of whether or not they have had a prior mental health diagnosis, risk factors were still similar among soldiers who attempted suicide, according to a new JAMA Psychiatry study published Aug. 29.

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Nurse and attorney Gloria Ramsey, JD, RN, FNAP, FAAN, has been appointed to serve as Johns Hopkins School of Nursing (JHSON) Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. In this inaugural position, she will promote and strategically further the school’s values of diversity and inclusion by bolstering JHSON’s excellence, innovation, and impact within education, practice, and the profession.

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Immune reactions are usually a good thing--the body's way of eliminating harmful bacteria and other pathogens.

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Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers say new experiments using magnetic pulse brain stimulation on people with moderate to severe restless legs syndrome (RLS) have added to evidence that the condition is due to excitability and hyperarousal in the part of the brain's motor cortex responsible for leg movement.

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Routine oral care to treat gum disease (periodontitis) may play a role in reducing inflammation and toxins in the blood (endotoxemia) and improving cognitive function in people with liver cirrhosis. The study is published ahead of print in the American Journal of Physiology—Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology.

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To promote transparency in scientific research, the basic research journal of the American Society for Cell Biology, Molecular Biology of the Cell (MBoC), will begin publishing peer review reports along with articles beginning in early 2019.

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Cancer researchers struggle to identify tumor cells that are interspersed within nonmalignant tissues because tumor cells exploit the tissue environment and monopolize available resources to continue growing. Researchers attribute cancer cell’s ability to use cell signaling and metabolic pathways that override normal cell growth restrictions to complicated chemical exchanges between tissue and tumor cells. A new approach shows promise to begin analyzing cell-to-cell interactions in this complex environment. The researchers discuss their work in Biointerphases.

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Designing lightweight materials -- a goal in the automotive and airline industries -- requires carefully joining together different types of materials like metals and polymers, and these additional steps drive up manufacturing costs. New work in laser technology recently increased the adhesion strength of metal-plastic hybrid materials; engineers demonstrated a technique for binding plastic to aluminum by pretreating sheets of aluminum with infrared lasers. They discuss their work in the Journal of Laser Applications.

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Pulmonary fibrosis is one of the most common and serious types of lung disease. Now researchers have developed an in vitro lung tissue-on-a-chip system that mimics lung fibrosis, offering rapid testing of potential new anti-fibrotic treatments.

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Researchers are reporting the protein/protein interactome of Zika virus and its human host cells with a proteomic approach that gives unprecedented insight into membrane-bound protein interactions. The data reveal a new role for a familiar organelle in viral replication.

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A new study published in the Lancet journal EClinical Medicine suggests that more mosquito nets are likely needed between mass campaigns to keep malaria cases in check.

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The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) has teamed with immigration law firm Getson and Shatz to offer a free webinar—Green Cards for Scientific Researchers: How to Win Your EB-1A/NIW Case—on Thursday, Sept. 27, 2018, from 1:30-2:30 pm EDT.

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Projects focused on providing simple, low-cost modifications to surgical techniques that could reduce pain or damage from these procedures dominated this year’s Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) challenge.

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Researchers found a new cell surface marker on stem cells induced to become dopamine neurons, which allow isolation of a more beneficial population of induced neurons for cell replacement therapy. Animals that received a transplant sorted using the new marker fared better than their counterparts with a typical transplant.

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New guidelines released by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force will give women over 30 years old options about screening for cervical cancer.

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Epithelial cells grown on a plastic dish are worse at segregating their chromosomes than epithelial cells growing in mice, a new study shows. The results may help explain why chromosomes go awry in cancer.

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Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine leaders plan to invest $100 million over the next five years to hire new faculty and support programs aimed at unraveling the mysteries of biology. Such “basic” science discoveries underpin virtually every major medical breakthrough, say the leaders, and they have appointed structural biologist James Berger, Ph.D., to direct the Johns Hopkins institute dedicated to this effort.

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Individual variations in genetic makeup and gut bacteria may explain the different effects of antibiotics on blood pressure, a new rat study suggests. The findings are published ahead of print in Physiological Genomics.

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AMP has announced the recipients of this year’s Award for Excellence in Molecular Diagnostics, Jeffrey A. Kant Leadership Award and Meritorious Service Award. These prestigious accolades will be presented in November during the AMP 2018 Annual Meeting & Expo in San Antonio, Texas.

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Mercy Medical Center, a nationally recognized medical facility, has announced the installation of five premium Resona 7 ultrasound machines from Mindray for the hospital’s Vascular Center

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To draft environmental laws and regulations, policymakers often rely on studies produced by researchers who examine human impact on nature. However, the methods behind many such studies are flawed and thus ill serve the makers of environmental policy.

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The financial fallout from breast cancer can last years after diagnosis, particularly for those with lymphedema, a common side effect from treatment, causing cumulative and cascading economic consequences for survivors, their families, and society, a study led by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers suggests.

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AMP has published consensus, evidence-based recommendations to aid clinical laboratory professionals with the management of most Chronic Myeloid Neoplasms (CMNs) and development of high-throughput pan-myeloid sequencing testing panels.

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Ceramic materials are used in nuclear, chemical and electrical power generation industries because of their ability to withstand extreme environments. However, at high temperatures, ceramics are susceptible to thermal-shock fractures caused by rapid temperature-changing events, such as cold water droplet contact with hot surfaces. In a novel interdisciplinary approach, engineers at the University of New Mexico report in AIP Advances the use of a cheap, simple, water-repelling coating to prevent thermal shock in ceramics.

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At a time when drug overdoses are becoming more prevalent and lethal, a new report provides a snapshot of regional illicit drug use and, for the first time, highlights the complexity of detecting and treating patients at hospital emergency departments for a severe drug-related event.

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Scientists funded by the National Eye Institute (NEI) report a novel gene therapy that halts vision loss in a canine model of a blinding condition called autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa (adRP). The strategy could one day be used to slow or prevent vision loss in people with the disease.

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NIBIB-funded researchers at Stanford University used dual PET and MRI technology to detect increased bone remodeling in the injured knees of patients likely to get osteoarthritis. This increased bone activity was often seen next to areas of early cartilage tissue degradation, suggesting an important link between degenerative changes in neighboring tissues in the disease.

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Researchers recently discovered that the strength of the magnetic field required to elicit a particular quantum mechanical process corresponds to the temperature of the material. Based on this finding, scientists can determine a sample’s temperature to a resolution of one cubic micron by measuring the field strength at which this effect occurs. Temperature sensing is integral in most industrial, electronic and chemical processes, so greater spatial resolution could benefit commercial and scientific pursuits. The team reports their findings in AIP Advances.

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Participants are now being sought for a new study, Stepping Forward in Grief, which was motivated by key findings from USU’s National Military Family Bereavement Study (NMFBS), the first large scientific study on the impact of U.S. service member death on surviving family members. NMFBS findings suggest that surviving family members who have experienced the loss of a service member may benefit from help managing their loss and grief with programs that recognize their unique experience as military family members.

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Researchers studying infertility in obese mice have identified a protein suppressed in the egg cell precursors of obese mice that controls antioxidant production and may regulate egg cell maturation.

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Increasing the amount of protein in the diet may reduce the liver’s fat content and lower the risk of diabetes in people with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). The study is published ahead of print in the American Journal of Physiology—Endocrinology and Metabolism.

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Astronomers have just assembled one of the most comprehensive portraits yet of the universe’s evolutionary history, based on a broad spectrum of observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and other space and ground-based telescopes. This photo encompasses a sea of approximately 15,000 galaxies — 12,000 of which are star-forming — widely distributed in time and space. Astronomers using the ultraviolet vision of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have captured one of the largest panoramic views of the fire and fury of star birth in the distant universe. The field features approximately 15,000 galaxies, about 12,000 of which are forming stars.

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Clinicians most often monitor antibodies because these small proteins attach to antigens, or foreign substances, we face every day. Most biomolecules, however, have complicated charge characteristics, and the sensor response from conventional carbon nanotube systems can be erratic. A team in Japan recently revealed how these systems work and proposed changes to dramatically improve biomolecule detection. They report their findings in the Journal of Applied Physics.

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Researchers in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Johns Hopkins Medicine report that a computerized study of 36 healthy adult volunteers asked to repeat the same movement over and over became significantly faster when asked to repeat that movement on demand—a result that occurred not because they anticipated the movement, but because of an as yet unknown mechanism that prepared their brains to replicate the same action.

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Breastfeeding can have its challenges early on. There’s learning the appropriate feeding positions and techniques, knowing when and how often to feed the baby, and so many other intangibles.

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Associate Professor Tamar Mendelson, PhD, an expert in adolescent mental health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has been appointed as a Bloomberg Professor of American Health. She will also serve, beginning in October, as the director of the School’s Center for Adolescent Health, which works with community partners to improve the health and well-being of urban youth.

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Discoveries by two HHMI investigators show how proteins that organize into liquid droplets inside cells make certain biological functions possible.

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The American Society for Cell Biology would like to formally announce that their journal Molecular Biology of the Cell (MBoC) seeks submissions for the Fifth Annual Special Issue on Quantitative Cell Biology.

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Researchers studying the link between sleep apnea and heart disease have found a new mechanism: lipid clearance from the blood is slower in people with apnea, predisposing them to heart disease. Fortunately, CPAP treatment seems to improve matters.