Johns Hopkins University's Marc Kamionkowski is a winner of the 2015 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics, one of the top prizes in the field, the American Astronomical Society and American Institute of Physics announced.
The American Astronomical Society (AAS) and the American Institute of Physics (AIP) announced today that Princeton University's David Spergel is a winner of the 2015 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics, one of the top prizes in the field which is awarded annually to outstanding mid-career scientists.
The American Astronomical Society (AAS) and the American Institute of Physics (AIP) announced today that Johns Hopkins University's Marc Kamionkowski is a winner of the 2015 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics, one of the top prizes in the field which is awarded annually to outstanding mid-career scientists.
Organization is key to an efficient workplace, and cells are no exception to this rule. New evidence from Johns Hopkins researchers suggests that, in addition to membranes, cells have another way to keep their contents and activities separate: with ribbons of spinning proteins.
Elizabeth Jaffee, M.D., a pioneer in the field of vaccine therapy for pancreatic cancer, and an internationally-recognized leader in immunology research, has been appointed deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. Jaffee, the Dana and Albert “Cubby” Broccoli Professor of Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has been a faculty member there since 1992.
The Genetics Society of America (GSA) is pleased to announce that John H. Postlethwait, PhD (University of Oregon) has been selected to receive the Society's George W. Beadle Award for outstanding contributions to the community of genetics researchers. The award, whose namesake was a Nobel laureate and geneticist, recognizes Dr. Postlethwait's seminal contributions to the zebrafish community. Dr. Postlethwait will receive the honor next week at GSA's 6th Strategic Conference of Zebrafish Investigators, January 17–21, in Pacific Grove, CA.
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved EnteroMedic’s VBLOC® vagal blocking therapy, delivered via the Maestro® System, which is the first medical device approved for obesity treatment that targets the nerve pathway between the brain and the stomach. The Obesity Society calls this a "a novel device that interrupts signals from the stomach to the brain that are believed to be involved with stomach emptying and feelings of fullness."
Medical ethicists at Johns Hopkins and Brigham and Women’s Hospital provide a roadmap to the health care holy grail of higher quality, lower cost care via referrals, while avoiding the ethical pitfalls of managed care in the 1990s
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), in Laurel, Maryland, has received $4 million in funding from the Mann Fund to develop a next-generation retinal prosthesis system. The work will be conducted in close collaboration with Second Sight Medical Products, Inc., a Sylmar, California-based company that develops, manufactures and markets implantable visual prosthetics for blind individuals.
Mutations in a gene that helps repair damaged chromosome ends may make smokers — especially female smokers — more susceptible to emphysema, according to results of a new study led by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers
People hospitalized with certain rare blood cell disorders frequently receive a treatment that is associated with a two- to fivefold increase in death, according to a new study that reviewed hospital records nationwide. The study authors recommend that for these rare disorders, doctors should administer the treatment, a platelet transfusion, only in exceptional circumstances.
Today, we’re surrounded by a variety of electronic devices that are moving increasingly closer to us – we can attach and wear them, or even implant electronics inside our bodies. Many types of smart devices are readily available and convenient to use. The goal now is to make wearable electronics that are flexible, sustainable and powered by ambient renewable energy.
A simple method to sense DNA, as well as potential biomarker proteins of cancer or other diseases such as Alzheimer’s, may soon be within reach – thanks to the work of a team of Yokohama National University researchers in Japan. As the team reports in Applied Physics Letters, they created a photonic crystal nanolaser biosensor capable of detecting the adsorption of biomolecules based on the laser’s wavelength shift.
A Roman philosopher was the first to note the relationship between a sound mind and a sound body. Now the findings of a new Johns Hopkins study reveal a possible biochemical explanation behind this ancient observation.
James N. Miller, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, has joined the Lab as a Senior Fellow. He will be joined at APL by recently appointed Senior Fellows James Gosler and Phil DePoy.
Astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have created a unique map of enigmatic molecules in our galaxy that are responsible for puzzling features in the light from stars.
GreenIndonesia and six partner Indigenous communities will headline Reiselivsmessen Oslo, the largest Scandinavian tourism event. Together they show that resilient and green economic development is possible when local community land rights and the integrity of natural ecosystems are equally protected.
By eliminating the barriers outlined in “The Perfect Storm” paper, genome-based research will continue to play a critical role in the development of more powerful tools to treat complex diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
The Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP), the premier global, non-profit organization serving molecular testing professionals, will speak at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Public Workshop, Framework for Regulatory Oversight of LDTs.
In the race to find a safe and effective weight loss drug, much attention has focused on the chemical processes that store and use energy. But a new mouse study from Johns Hopkins suggests that tweaking these processes, even in a targeted way that affects only fat cells, may not yield a silver-bullet obesity cure.
Venom from an eastern diamondback rattlesnake in the Everglades is distinct from the cocktail of toxins delivered by the same species in the Florida panhandle area, some 500 miles away. But no matter where you go in the Southeastern United States, the venom of the eastern coral snake is always the same. The results of a large-scale survey of venom variation in the two snake species, published January 8, 2015 in the journal GENETICS, challenge common assumptions in venom evolution research, provide crucial information for rattlesnake conservation, and will help coral snake antivenom development.
In a surprising paradox, the male hormone testosterone, generally thought to be a feeder of prostate cancer, has been found to suppress some advanced prostate cancers and also may reverse resistance to testosterone-blocking drugs used to treat prostate cancer.
America’s youngest scientists, increasingly losing research dollars, are leaving the academic biomedical workforce, a brain drain that poses grave risks for the future of science, according to a journal article published this week by Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels.
Luring dormant HIV out of hiding and destroying its last cure-defying holdouts has become the holy grail of HIV eradication, but several recent attempts to do so have failed. Now the findings of a Johns Hopkins-led study reveal why that is and offer a strategy that could form a blueprint for a therapeutic vaccine to eradicate lingering virus from the body.
Scientists have long known that species such as amphibians and fish can regenerate retinal cells — so why can’t mammals? This and related questions are the premise for the third report from the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation and the International Retinal Research Foundation’s 10-year collaboration, recently published in the ARVO journal Translational Vision Science & Technology (TVST).
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have found out how a protein crucial to learning works: by removing a biochemical “clamp” that prevents connections between nerve cells in the brain from growing stronger. The finding moves neuroscientists a step closer to figuring out how learning and memory work, and how problems with them can arise.
The incidence rate of diagnoses of glaucoma among service members younger than 30 years of age increased slightly during a 15-year surveillance period, most likely reflecting improved screening for the disease within the U.S. Armed Forces, according to a newly released health surveillance report.
Salisbury University’s Accounting and Legal Studies Department recently earned accreditation from AACSB International, the longest-serving global accrediting body for business schools. The department is one of just 182 accounting programs globally to earn AACSB accreditation.
In a two-year longitudinal study involving 13 intensive care units in four U.S. hospitals, researchers found that better physical functioning — basic and complex activities considered essential for maintaining independence — is associated with remission of general anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms.
The Genetics Society of America (GSA) is proud to name eight early-career scientists—four graduate students and four postdoctoral researchers—as Spring 2015 recipients of GSA’s DeLill Nasser Award for Professional Development in Genetics. The award provides a $1,000 travel grant for each recipient to attend any national or international meeting, conference, or laboratory course that will enhance his or her career.
The Johns Hopkins School of Nursing (JHSON) ranks number 3 among the nation’s online graduate nursing programs, according to U.S. News & World Report. The school’s leap from 24th place affirms the level of excellence and leadership given not only in the classroom but also to online learning.
An analysis of the genomes and epigenomes of lean and obese mice and humans has turned up a wealth of clues about how genes and the environment conspire to trigger diabetes, Johns Hopkins researchers say. Their findings reveal that obesity-induced changes to the epigenome — reversible chemical “tags” on DNA — are surprisingly similar in mice and humans, and might provide a new route to prevention and treatment of the disease, which affects hundreds of millions worldwide.
For a skin cell to do its job, it must turn on a completely different set of genes than a liver cell — and keep genes it doesn’t need switched off. One way of turning off large groups of genes at once is to send them to “time-out” at the edge of the nucleus. New research shows how DNA gets sent to the nucleus’ far edge, a process critical to controlling genes and determining cell fate.
At a time when our earliest human ancestors had recently mastered walking upright, the heart of our Milky Way galaxy underwent a titanic eruption, driving gases and other material outward at 2 million miles per hour. Now, at least 2 million years later, astronomers are witnessing the aftermath of the explosion: billowing clouds of gas towering about 30,000 light-years above and below the plane of our galaxy.
The largest NASA Hubble Space Telescope image ever assembled, this sweeping view of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) is the sharpest large composite image ever taken of our galactic neighbor. Though the galaxy is over 2 million light-years away, the Hubble telescope is powerful enough to resolve individual stars in a 61,000-light-year-long section of the galaxy's pancake-shaped disk.
In celebration of its 25th anniversary, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revisited the famous "Pillars of Creation" region of the Eagle Nebula (M16), providing astronomers with a sharper and wider view. As a bonus, the pillars have been photographed in near-infrared light, as well as visible light.
LifeBridge Health selects Mauro Moscucci, M.D., M.B.A., as Sinai Hospital’s chief of medicine and the medical director of the LifeBridge Health Cardiovascular Institute.
A powerful “genome editing” technology known as CRISPR has been used by researchers since 2012 to trim, disrupt, replace or add to sequences of an organism’s DNA. Now, scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine have shown that the system also precisely and efficiently alters human stem cells.
A team of researchers at the University of São Paulo in Brazil has developed a new levitation device that can hover a tiny object with more control than any instrument that has come before.
Women who have adequate levels of B vitamins in their bodies are more likely to get and stay pregnant even when they also have high levels of a common pesticide known to have detrimental reproductive effects, according to new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research.
A new study published in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science (IOVS) has found that chronic (long term) hypertension increases a person’s susceptibility to glaucoma. These results suggest that doctors should consider a patient’s blood pressure levels in managing the potentially blinding eye disorder.
The following articles are freely available online from Physics Today (www.physicstoday.org), the most influential and closely followed magazine in the world devoted to physics and the physical science community.
Scientists from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have created a statistical model that measures the proportion of cancer incidence, across many tissue types, caused mainly by random mutations that occur when stem cells divide. By their measure, two-thirds of adult cancer incidence across tissues can be explained primarily by “bad luck,” when these random mutations occur in genes that can drive cancer growth, while the remaining third are due to environmental factors and inherited genes.
Ohio University researchers find that regular mental imagery exercises help preserve arm strength during 4 weeks of immobilization. The article is published in the Journal of Neurophysiology and is highlighted as part of the APSselect program.
A group of scientists led by researchers at the Université de Versailles' Institut Lavoisier in France has worked out how to stably gift-wrap a chemical gas known as nitric oxide within metal-organic frameworks. Such an encapsulated chemical may allow doctors to administer nitric oxide in a more highly controlled way to patients, suggesting new approaches for treating dangerous infections and heart conditions with the biologically-active substance.
While an effective treatment is available for combating multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, it carries serious side effects for patients. New research conducted at the Center for Tuberculosis Research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine shows that lower doses of the toxic drug bedaquiline — given together with verapamil, a medication that’s used to treat various heart conditions — can lead to the same antibacterial effects as higher toxic doses of bedaquiline.
David E. Kaplan, a Johns Hopkins University professor, theoretical particle physicist and documentary producer, received the 2015 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award in Journalism for his contributions to the production of the film Particle Fever.
Already known to cut proteins, the enzyme SPPL3 turns out to have additional talents, according to a new study from Johns Hopkins. In its newly discovered role, SPPL3 works without cutting proteins to activate T cells, the immune system’s foot soldiers. Because its structure is similar to that of presenilin enzymes, which have been implicated in Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers believe their findings could shed more light on presenilin functions, in addition to providing new insight into how the immune system is controlled.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered what keeps an enzyme from becoming overzealous in its clipping of DNA. Since controlled clipping is required for the production of specialized immune system proteins, an understanding of what keeps the enzyme in check should help explain why its mutant forms can lead to immunodeficiency and cancer.
A multivitamin given daily to pregnant women in rural Bangladesh reduced pre-term births, increased infant birth weight and resulted in healthier babies overall, according to the large randomized trial conducted by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers.