June 5, 2013
Media Contact: Phil Sneiderman
Office: (443) 287-9960
Cell: (410) 299-7462
prs@jhu.edu

Bubbles in a champagne glass may add a festive fizz to the drink, but microscopic bubbles that form in a material called metallic glass can signal serious trouble. In this normally high-strength material, bubbles may indicate that a brittle breakdown is in progress.

That’s why Johns Hopkins researchers used computer simulations to study how these bubbles form and expand when a piece of metallic glass is pulled outward by negative pressure, such as the suction produced by a vacuum. Their findings were published recently in the journal Physical Review Letters.

“A lot of people are interested in metallic glasses because of their strength and their potential use to make better cell phones cases, computer housings and other products,” said Michael L. Falk, who supervised the research. “But what precisely causes these materials to break apart or ‘fail’ has remained a mystery. By studying the behavior of the bubbles that appear when these glasses crack, we were able to learn more about how that process occurs.”

When glass is mentioned, many people think of window panes. But to scientists, a glass is a material that is cooled quickly from a liquid to a solid so that its atoms do not arrange themselves into orderly crystal lattices, as most metals do. A nearly random arrangement of atoms gives glasses distinctive mechanical and magnetic properties. Unlike window panes, most metallic glasses are not transparent or easy to break, but they do often spring back to their original shape after being bent. Still, when powerful enough force is applied, they can break.

“Our lab team is interested in learning just how susceptible metallic glasses are to fracturing, how much energy it takes to create a crack,” said Falk, a professor in the Whiting School of Engineering’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering. “We wanted to study the material under conditions that prevail at the tip of the crack, the point at which the crack pulls open the glass. We wanted to see the steps that develop as the material splits at that location. That’s where dramatic things happen: atoms are pulled apart; bonds are broken.”

Michael Falk – Photo by Marty Katz http://baltimorephotographer.com

At the site where this breakup begins, a vacant space—a bubble—is left behind. The spontaneous formation of tiny bubbles under high negative pressures is a process known as cavitation. The researchers in Falk’s lab discovered that cavitation plays a key role in the failure, or breakdown, of metallic glasses. “We’re interested in seeing the birth of one of these bubbles,” he said. “Once it appears, it releases energy as it grows bigger, and it may eventually become big enough for us to see it under a microscope. But by the time we could see them, the process through which they had formed would be long over.”

Therefore, to study the bubble’s birth, Falk’s team relied on a computer model of a cube of a metallic glass made of copper and zirconium, measuring only about 30 atoms on each side. By definition, a bubble appears as a cavity in the digital block of metallic glass, with no atoms present within that open space. “Through our computer model experiments, we wanted to see if we could predict under what conditions these bubbles can form,” Falk said.

The simulations revealed that these bubbles emerge in a way that is well predicted by classical theories, but that the bubble formation also competes with attempts by the glass to reshuffle its atoms to release the stress applied to a particular location. That second process is known as a shear transformation. As the glass responds to pressure, which of the two processes has the upper hand—bubble formation or shear transformation—varies, the researchers found. For example, they determined that bubbles dominate in the presence of  high tensile loads, meaning the strong pulling forces that are more common near the tip of a crack. But when the pulling forces were at a low level, the atom reshuffling process prevailed.

Falk and his colleagues hope their findings can help scientists who are developing new metallic glass alloys for products that can take advantage of the material’s high strength and elasticity, along with its tendency not to shrink when it is molded to a particular shape. These characteristics are prized, for example, by makers of cell phones and computers. Producers of such products have expressed interest in metallic glass, and the Falk team’s research may help them develop new metallic glass alloys that are less likely to break.

“Our aim is to incorporate our findings into predictive models of failure for these materials,” Falk said, “so that they can be optimized and used in applications that require materials that are both strong and fracture-resistant.”

The lead author of the Physical Review Letters article was Pengfei Guan, a postdoctoral fellow in Falk’s lab. Along with Falk, the co-authors were Shuo Lu, Michael J. B. Spector and Pavan K. Valavala, who were all part of Falk’s lab team at the time the research was conducted. The work was supported by National Science Foundation Grant No. DMR0808704.

Video produced by the JHU Falk Research Group. Video caption: This is an animation of the data from a molecular dynamics simulation of a CuZr metallic glass under hydrostatic loading. Cavitation results, here located near the box edge. Note that the simulation cell is subject to periodic boundary conditions, so only one cavitation event occurs during this simulation.

Related links:

Michael L. Falk’s Website: http://materials.jhu.edu/index.php/people/detail/michael-falk/faculty

Department of Materials Science and Engineering: http://materials.jhu.edu/

Whiting School of Engineering: http://engineering.jhu.edu/

###

Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/ Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

When a solar flare filled with charged particles erupts from the sun, its magnetic fields sometime break a widely accepted rule of physics. The flux-freezing theorem dictates that the magnetic lines of force should flow away in lock-step with the particles, whole and unbroken. Instead, the lines sometimes break apart and quickly reconnect in a way that has mystified astrophysicists.

New research led by a Johns Hopkins mathematical physicist focuses on the “misbehavior” of magnetic fields in solar flares. In this image, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured an X1.2 class solar flare, peaking on May 15, 2013. Credit: NASA/SDO

But in a paper published in the May 23 issue of the journal Nature, an interdisciplinary research team led by a Johns Hopkins mathematical physicist says it has found a key to the mystery. The culprit, the group proposed, is turbulence—the same sort of violent disorder that can jostle a passenger jet when it occurs in the atmosphere. Using complex computer modeling to mimic what happens to magnetic fields when they encounter turbulence within a solar flare, the researchers built their case, explaining why the usual rule did not apply.

“The flux-freezing theorem often explains things beautifully,” said Gregory Eyink, a Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics professor who was lead author of the Nature study. “But in other instances, it fails miserably. We wanted to figure out why this failure occurs.”

Gregory Eyink, professor of applied mathematics and statistics at Johns Hopkins. Photo by Nat Creamer.

The flux-freezing theorem was developed 70 years ago by Hannes Alfvén, who later won a Nobel Prize in physics for closely related work. His principle states that magnetic lines of force are carried along in a moving fluid like strands of thread cast into a river, and thus they can never “break” and reconnect. But scientists have discovered that within violent solar flares, the principle does not always hold true. Studies of these flares have determined that their magnetic field lines sometimes do break like stretched rubber bands and reconnect in as little as 15 minutes, releasing vast amounts of energy that power the flare. “But the flux-freezing principle of modern plasma physics implies that this process in the solar corona should take a million years!” Eyink said. “A big problem in astrophysics is that no one could explain why flux-freezing works in some cases but not others.”

Some scientists suspected that turbulence was playing havoc with the behavior predicted by this principle. To find out, Eyink teamed up with other experts in astrophysics, mechanical engineering, data management and computer science, based at Johns Hopkins and other institutions. “By necessity, this was a highly collaborative effort,” Eyink said. “Everyone was contributing their expertise. No one person could have accomplished this.”

The team developed a computer simulation to replicate what happens under various conditions to the charged particles that exist in a plasma state of matter within solar flares. “Our answer was very surprising,” Eyink said. “Magnetic flux-freezing no longer holds true when the plasma becomes turbulent. Most physicists expected that flux-freezing would play an even larger role as the plasma became more highly conducting and more turbulent, but, as a matter of fact, it breaks down completely. In an even greater surprise, we found that the motion of the magnetic field lines becomes completely random. I do not mean ‘chaotic,’ but instead as unpredictable as quantum mechanics. Rather than flowing in an orderly, deterministic fashion, the magnetic field lines instead spread out like a roiling plume of smoke.”

Although some scholars may still believe there are other explanations for solar flares, Eyink said, “I think we made a pretty compelling case that turbulence alone can account for field-line breaking.”

The way the researchers from different disciplines teamed up with Eyink to solve the solar flare puzzle was particularly noteworthy. “We used ground-breaking new database methods, like those employed in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, combined with high-performance computing techniques and original mathematical developments,” he said. “The work required a perfect marriage of physics, mathematics and computer science to develop a fundamentally new approach to performing research with very large datasets.”

Eyink added that the research could lead to a better understanding of solar flares and mass ejections of material from the sun’s corona. Such powerful “space weather” or geomagnetic storms can endanger astronauts, knock out communications satellites and even lead to massive blackouts of electrical power grids on Earth, he said.

Co-authors of the Nature study from Johns Hopkins’s Whiting School of Engineering and Krieger School of Arts and Sciences were Cristian Lalescu and Hussein Aluie, from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics; Kalin Kanov and Randal Burns, from the Department of Computer Science; Charles Meneveau, from the Department of Mechanical Engineering; and Alexander Szalay, from the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Aluie is also affiliated with the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The authors of this study are also affiliated with Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science (IDIES), which has been facilitating groundbreaking research based on big data.

The co-authors from other institutions were Ethan Vishniac, from the Department of Physics and Engineering Physics, University of Saskatchewan, Canada; and Kai Bürger, from Fakultät für Informatik, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany.

Funding for the research came from National Science Foundation grant CDI-II: CMMI 0941530, and the database infrastructure was funded by NSF grant OCI-108849 and by Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science. Support also was provided by Microsoft Research. Vishniac’s work was supported by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

The turbulence data on which the analysis relies are publicly available at http://turbulence.pha.jhu.edu .

Related Johns Hopkins links:

Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics: http://www.ams.jhu.edu/

Department of Computer Science: http://www.cs.jhu.edu/

Department of Mechanical Engineering: http://www.me.jhu.edu/

Department of Physics and Astronomy: http://physics-astronomy.jhu.edu/

Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science: http://idies.jhu.edu/

###

Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/ Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

A team of students at the Johns Hopkins University’s Whiting School of Engineering has designed for NASA a new stethoscope that delivers accurate heart- and body-sounds to medics who are trying to assess astronauts’ health on long missions in noisy spacecraft.

Space is serene, because no air means no sound. But inside the average spacecraft, with its whirring fans, humming computers and buzzing instruments, is about as raucous as a party filled with laughing, talking people.

Johns Hopkins mechanical engineering students developed these components for a stethoscope that could do a better job of detecting heart sounds within a noisy space vessel. Photo: Will Kirk/homewoodphoto.jhu.edu

“Imagine trying to get a clear stethoscope signal in an environment like that, where the ambient noise contaminates the faint heart signal. That is the problem we set out to solve,” said Elyse Edwards, a senior from Issaquah, Wash., who teamed up on the project with fellow seniors Noah Dennis, a senior from New York City, and Shin Shin Cheng, from Sibu, Sarawak, Malaysia.

The students worked under the guidance of James West, a Johns Hopkins research professor in electrical and computer engineering and co-inventor of the electret microphone used in telephones and in almost 90 percent of the more than two billion microphones produced today.

Together, they developed a stethoscope that uses both electronic and mechanical strategies to help the device’s internal microphone pick up sounds that are clear and discernible – even in the noisy spacecraft, and even when the device is not placed perfectly correctly on the astronaut’s body.

“Considering that during long space missions, there is a pretty good chance an actual doctor won’t be on board, we thought it was important that the stethoscope did its job well, even when an amateur was the one using it,” Dennis said.

The project was developed during a two-semester mechanical engineering senior design course offered by the university’s Whiting School of Engineering. Teams of three or four undergraduates are each given a small budget to design and build a prototype requested by a sponsoring business or organization. This year’s results were unveiled recently at a showcase conducted shortly before the students were scheduled to graduate.

The device also includes many other performance-enhancing improvements, including low power consumption, rechargeable batteries, mechanical exclusion of ambient noise and a suction cup, so that it sticks firmly onto the patient’s chest, says Cheng.

Though developed for NASA’s use in outer space, this improved stethoscope could also be put to use here on Earth in combat situations, where ambient noise is abundant, and in developing countries, where medical care conditions are a bit more primitive.

West also plans to use the device to record infants’ heart and lung sounds in developing countries as part of a project that will attempt to develop a stethoscope that knows how to identify the typical wheezing and crackling breath sounds associated with common diseases. This would allow on-site medics to help make preliminary automated diagnoses.

Related links:
Whiting School of Engineering
Department of Mechanical Engineering

###

Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/ Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

It’s a parent’s worst nightmare: a young child is accidentally left in a locked car on a warm and sunny day. The closed windows turn the car into a greenhouse, and the child dies of heatstroke.

In a key first step toward preventing such tragedies, three undergraduate engineering students at Johns Hopkins have turned technology from a popular video game player into a detector for children left behind in dangerously overheated vehicles. The young inventors tinkered with parts from a Kinect motion-sensing device, normally used with the Xbox 360 game console, and came up with the heart of a new system aimed at “seeing” children left in locked cars and summoning help.

The student inventors unveiled their child detection prototype at a recent senior design showcase. From left are Anshul Mehra, Yejin Kim and Jeffrey Kamei; at the far right is their faculty sponsor, Eileen McDonald of the the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy. Photo by Norman Barker/homewoodphoto.jhu.edu

Although the project needs further work, the students’ sponsor said their proof-of-concept prototype is a significant move toward reducing the number of children lost in locked-car incidents. “These are preventable deaths that deserve our attention,” said Eileen McDonald, a faculty member in the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy, part of the Bloomberg School of Public Health. “The students showed that they could detect even the tiniest movements associated with a child left in the backseat of a car. We don’t have a perfect model yet, but we’re hoping another group will pick up where they left off and bring it closer to becoming a commercial product.”

The project was developed during a two-semester mechanical engineering senior design course offered by the university’s Whiting School of Engineering. Teams of three or four undergraduates were each given a small budget to design and build a prototype requested by a sponsoring business or organization. This year’s results were unveiled recently at a showcase conducted shortly before the students were scheduled to graduate.

McDonald and her center challenged one of these teams to address a public health problem documented in a 2012 study released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. According to the report, 527 heatstroke-related deaths involving children left in cars had been recorded in the United States since 1998, or an average of 38 such deaths annually. The study, conducted by researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, cited the circumstances surrounding these deaths: in 51 percent of the cases, the caregivers had forgotten the children were in the car; in 30 percent of the cases, the children were playing in an unattended vehicle; and in 17 percent of the cases, an adult intentionally left the child in the vehicle. (The remaining 2 percent did not fit within these categories, or the circumstances were unknown.)

The NHTSA report also included testing results of several safety devices already being sold to alert parents that a baby or toddler has been left in the vehicle. The report stated that “the devices were inconsistent and unreliable.”

McDonald asked Johns Hopkins mechanical engineering students Jeffrey Kamei, Yejin Kim and Anshul Mehra to come up with a better way to prevent these deaths. She also encouraged them to produce a passive protection system that would operate without requiring the driver to flip a switch or hook a wristband to the child to activate it.

During brainstorming sessions last fall, the students hit on the idea of adapting the Kinect video game technology. The device uses an infrared camera and projector to sense the movements of a game player and incorporates these motions into what is happening on the video screen. The students thought the same technology could sense even the most subtle movements of a baby sleeping in a rear car-seat.

An important advantage of using infrared technology, the students said, was that it cannot penetrate the vehicle’s glass windows, so it is unlikely that a movement outside the car, such as a pedestrian or a passing vehicle, could accidentally trigger the motion detector. But inside a car, early tests indicated the sensor should be able to quickly pick up a baby or toddler who is trapped or sleeping inside.

Although the largest hurdle has been cleared, additional work must be done to complete and test the system before it can become a commercial product. First, researchers will either have to license Microsoft’s Kinect technology or develop other equipment that works in a similar way. Also on the drawing board are several options for the system to summon help when a trapped child is detected. These could include a loud alarm or an automated call to police or firefighters, or to a car security service such as OnStar.

As they prepared for graduation, the student inventors said they had gained valuable real-world engineering experience while launching a project that could have significant public health value.

When the project opportunities were posted last fall, “this was my first choice,” said Mehra, who lives in Baltimore. “Within my culture in India, family is very important. This was a project that could help prevent a big family tragedy.”

“At first it was just a cool idea, and then it evolved,” said Kamei, who is from Downey, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles. “I think it definitely has a lot of potential.”

“I’m glad we were able to build something that could protect babies,” added Kim, a citizen of South Korea who completed her high school studies in Texas.

Notes: The 2012 NHTSA report on heatstroke and children in parked vehicles can be viewed at: http://www.nhtsa.gov/DOT/NHTSA/NVS/811632.pdf‎ . Updated statistics on heatstroke deaths of children in vehicles may be viewed on a website maintained by San Francisco State University researcher Jan Null: http://www.ggweather.com/heat/ .

Related links:

Department of Mechanical Engineering: http://www.me.jhu.edu/
Whiting School of Engineering: http://engineering.jhu.edu
Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy: http://www.jhsph.edu/injurycenter

###

Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/ Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, a renowned neuroscientist and neurosurgeon at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is the featured speaker at this year’s university-wide commencement ceremony for graduates from all divisions and campuses of The Johns Hopkins University.

The event will take place, rain or shine, from 8:40 a.m. to approximately noon on Thursday, May 23, on Homewood Field, the stadium on the northern end of the university’s Homewood campus at 3400 N. Charles St. in Baltimore. There will be a press section on the playing surface of Homewood Field. Identification is required; prior notification of intention to cover the ceremony is preferred. See above for contact information.

The ceremony will feature remarks from President Ronald J. Daniels and a speech by Quiñones-Hinojosa, the conferring of all degrees, and the bestowing of honorary degrees. In addition, all undergraduate students as well as doctoral students in attendance will have their names announced as they file on stage to have their degrees recognized. The majority of students will receive their diplomas following the event; others will receive them at separate diploma ceremonies at their respective schools.


Prior to the ceremony, the undergraduates from the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, the Whiting School of Engineering, the School of Nursing and the Peabody Institute will gather on the Keyser Quadrangle and walk through campus, passing through the Freshman Quad, where their academic journey started. All other graduates will enter from the Athletic Center. Following the ceremony, the newly minted alumni and their families will be invited to a reception on the Keyser Quadrangle.

The university is also once again putting its “green” principles into practice at commencement to create a zero-waste ceremony through several measures, including caps and gowns made from 100 percent recyclable materials, and reusable stage decorations. The commencement program will be printed on paper that has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. The reception will feature local caterers specializing in green practices, and biodegradable dinnerware and food scraps will be composted.

This year’s honorary degree recipients are Eddie Brown, chairman and chief executive officer and founder of Brown Capital in Glen Arm, Md., and his wife C. Sylvia Brown, community philanthropist and higher education leader; Vernon Mountcastle, professor emeritus of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins; and Nelson Sewankambo, an internationally recognized medical researcher and educator from Kampala, Uganda.

Noteworthy speakers at other Johns Hopkins commencement-related events – at various times and locations from Tuesday, May 21 through Friday, May 24 – include Wes Moore, best-selling author and JHU alumnus, who will speak to the School of Education; Pete Seeger, American folk singer and songwriter, who will speak to graduates of the Peabody Institute; Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent, who will speak to graduates of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies; and Wesley G. Bush, CEO and president, Northrop Grumman, who will speak to graduates of the Carey Business School.
 

About the Graduating Class (as of May 13)

The total number of earned degrees, certificates and diplomas awarded is expected to be about 7,185, including 1,758 bachelor degrees (1,332 of which to be conferred upon seniors graduating from the schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering at the Homewood campus) and 5,424  graduate degrees from across the university: 1,295 from the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences; 1,076 from the Whiting School of Engineering; 547 from the Carey Business School; 579 from the School of Education; 203 from the Peabody Institute; 107 from the School of Nursing; 479  from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS); 279 from the School of Medicine; and 859 from the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

About the Ceremonies

The university as a whole and its nine academic divisions will hold the following commencement events, listed by date:

Bloomberg School of Public Health

Tuesday, May 21, 9 a.m., Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Cathedral and Preston streets

Speaker: Nelson Sewankambo, a Ugandan doctor and medical researcher

Carey Business School

Tuesday, May 21, 4 p.m., Meyerhoff Symphony Hall

Speaker: Wesley G. Bush, CEO and president, Northrop Grumman

Whiting School of Engineering Graduate Ceremony

Wednesday, May 22, 7 p.m., Homewood Field, Homewood campus.

Speaker: Kenneth W. DeFontes Jr., president and CEO, Baltimore Gas and Electric Company

University-wide Commencement Ceremony and Arts and Sciences/Engineering Undergraduate Diploma Ceremony

Thursday, May 23, from 8:40 a.m. to approximately noon, Homewood Field

Speaker: Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, a renowned neuroscientist and neurosurgeon at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

School of Medicine Diploma Award Ceremony

Thursday, May 23, 2:30 p.m., Meyerhoff Symphony Hall

Speaker: Jon R. Lorsch, PhD, Professor of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry

Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies Diploma Award Ceremony

Thursday, May 23, 3 p.m., DAR Constitution Hall, Constitution Hall, 18th and D Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C.

Speaker: Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent

School of Nursing Diploma and Award Ceremony

Thursday, May 23, 3 p.m., France Merrick Performing Arts Center (Hippodrome Theatre), 12 North Eutaw St.

Speaker: Martha N. Hill, dean of The Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, who is stepping down at the end of the academic year.

The Peabody Institute Diploma Award Ceremony

Thursday, May 23, 7:30 p.m., Friedberg Concert Hall, Peabody Institute, 1 E. Mount Vernon Place.

Speaker: Pete Seeger, American folk singer and songwriter, who will receive the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America.

School of Education Diploma Award Ceremony

Thursday, May 23, 7:30 p.m., Homewood Field, Homewood campus.

Speaker: Wes Moore, best-selling author and JHU alumnus

Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences Master’s Diploma Award Ceremony

Friday, May 24, 10 a.m., Homewood Field, Homewood campus.

Speaker: John M. Bridgeland, president and CEO of Civic Enterprises

                                                                                                                 ###

Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://releases.jhu.edu/

Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

Student-built robots will face off in various challenges on Saturday

WHEN: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, May 4, 2013.  NOTE: Best times to view the robots in action are between 9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. or between 1:30 and 4:30 p.m. Awards will be handed out between 4:30 and 5 p.m.

WHERE: In the Newton White Athletic Center on The Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus, 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore.

WHO: More than 100 Baltimore City Public middle and high school students will compete in the Hopkins Robotics Cup, the first Baltimore City VEX Robotics Championship. A list of participating Baltimore schools is posted below.

WHAT: Thirty-six teams of students from nine Baltimore City middle schools and 11 Baltimore City high schools have been building robots using VEX Robotics educational products. Each robot must be no larger than 18 inches on each side.

Teams will participate in qualification and elimination matches. The engineering challenge, which changes every year, is presented in the form of a game. This year’s challenge is called the Sack Attack. With guidance from their teachers and mentors, students will use the VEX Robotics Design System to build innovative robots designed to score the most points possible in the qualification and elimination matches and Skills Challenges. The VEX system is intended to introduce students as well as adults to the world of robotics.

The event is supported financially by The Abell Foundation, AAI Textron Systems, AECOM, and T. Rowe Price.

WHY: The event, hosted by the Center for Educational Outreach at Johns Hopkins’ Whiting School of Engineering in partnership with Baltimore City Public Schools, is intended to increase the number of youth who pursue science, technology engineering and math education and careers, particularly women and underrepresented minorities.

SUPERVISOR FOR THE EVENT: Margaret Hart, the competition’s director, can be reached at 410-516-4180. To reach her on the day of the event, please call her cell phone at 617-642-0023.

More information about the competition can be found at this Web site: http://www.robotevents.com/the-hopkins-robotics-cup.html

Competition rules can be viewed here: http://www.vexforum.com/wiki/index.php/Sack_Attack

Videos of earlier VEX Robotics contests at other locations can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3umAHbp-xzc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18vSkga_npE

Participating Baltimore City Public Schools (Some schools will send more than one team.)

Middle schools:
Cross Country Elementary Middle School
Curtis Bay Elementary Middle School
Francis Scott Key Elementary Middle School
Friendship Preparatory Academy @ Calverton
Highlandtown Elementary Middle School
Margaret Brent Elementary Middle School
Northeast Middle School
The Midtown Academy
Vanguard Collegiate Middle School

High schools:
Baltimore City College
Baltimore IT Academy
Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women
Baltimore Talent Development High School
Digital Harbor High School
Friendship Academy of Engineering and Technology
Heritage High School
Maryland Academy of Technology and Health Sciences
Patterson High School
Paul Laurence Dunbar High School
WEB Dubois High School
Western High School Robotics

###

Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/. Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

April 25, 2013
Media Contact: Phil Sneiderman
Office: (443) 287-9960
Cell: (410) 299-7462
prs@jhu.edu

WHEN: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, April 27. Best times to videotape or photograph the robots are from 11:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and from 2:45 p.m. to 3:45 p.m.

WHERE: Charles Commons Conference Center, 33^rd and North Charles streets, The Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus in Baltimore. Please use the 33^rd street entrance.

WHO: Baltimore area high school and middle school students will enter their robots in the Johns Hopkins Robo-Challenge 2013.

WHAT: More than a dozen student teams from the Baltimore area will bring small autonomous robots to compete in various events during the competition, organized by Johns Hopkins graduate students from the university’s Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics. Contest events include slalom racing, mystery maze navigation, “tumor” detection, robot dancing and innovative use.

DETAILS: The Petite Slalom is a course in which robots travel from the starting point to the finish line while traveling through “gates.” In Mystery Maze, teams will arrive at the competition with no knowledge of what the course will be. The route will be some type of blind course that requires robotic sensors to maneuver. Also, teams will design an innovative and practical use for the Basic Stamp Board of Education kit (Boebot), or any other robotic kits in the Innovative Use competition. In the Search and Destroy event, teams will design and program their Boebots to find all the “tumors” (large white circles) at various unknown locations. In the Robot Dance contest, teams will program an original dance routine for their robot. The day will also include brief lectures from a prominent Johns Hopkins robotics researcher and current engineering college students. It will conclude with a tour of the state-of-the art laboratory for computational sensing and robotics. More information about the competition and rules are at https://www.lcsr.jhu.edu/Education/CISSRS/JHRC2013 .

WHY: The event’s goal is to stir the interest of middle and high school students in science and technology. This event is sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association, Johns Hopkins Graduate Representative Organization, and the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics.

Media Contact for the Event: The event supervisor, Xingchi He, can be reached by email at jhurobocomp@gmail.com or by cell phone at 443-691-6739.

Some area schools that are participating in the Johns Hopkins Robo-Challenge 2013:

Saint Anselm’s Abbey
MMI Prep School
Garrison Forrest School
Northeast Middle School
MCEA Education Association
Stemmers Run Middle School
Loyola Blakefield
Burleigh Manor Middle School
Baltimore IT Academy
Richard Montgomery High School
Hope Chinese Middle School
Susquenita High School
Friends School of Baltimore

###

Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/. Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

By using swarms of untethered grippers, each as small as a speck of dust, Johns Hopkins engineers and physicians say they have devised a new way to perform biopsies that could provide a more effective way to access narrow conduits in the body as well as find early signs of cancer or other diseases.

In two recent peer-reviewed journal articles, the team reported successful animal testing of the tiny tools, which require no batteries, wires or tethers as they seize internal tissue samples. The devices are called “mu-grippers,” incorporating the Greek letter that represents the term for “micro.” Instead of relying on electric or pneumatic power, these star-shaped tools are autonomously activated by the body’s heat, which causes their tiny “fingers” to close on clusters of cells. Because the tools also contain a magnetic material, they can be retrieved through an existing body opening via a magnetic catheter.

This image depicts an mu-gripper near the opening of an endoscopic catheter. Image credit: Evin Gultepe, Gracias Lab, Johns Hopkins University.

In the April print edition of Gastroenterology, the researchers described their use of the mu-grippers to collect cells from the colon and esophagus of a pig, which was selected because its intestinal tract is similar to that of humans. Earlier this year, the team members reported in the journal Advanced Materials that they had successfully inserted the mu-grippers through the mouth and stomach of a live animal and released them in a hard-to-access place, the bile duct, from which they obtained tissue samples.

“This is the first time that anyone has used a sub-millimeter-sized device—the size of  a dust particle—to conduct a biopsy in a live animal,” said David Gracias, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering whose lab team developed the microgrippers. “That’s a significant accomplishment. And because we can send the grippers in through natural orifices, it is an important advance in minimally invasive treatment and a step toward the ultimate goal of making surgical procedures noninvasive.”

This photo compares the size of a microgripper with that the much larger forceps used in traditional biopsies. Image credit: Evin Gultepe, Gracias Lab, Johns Hopkins University.

Another member of the research team, physician Florin M. Selaru of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said the mu-grippers could lead to an entirely new approach to conducting biopsies, which are considered the “gold standard” test for diagnosing cancer and other diseases.

The advantage of the mu-grippers, he said, is that they could collect far more samples from many more locations. He pointed out that the much larger forceps used during a typical colonoscopy may remove 30 to 40 pieces of tissue to be studied for signs of cancer. But despite a doctor’s best intentions, the small number of specimens makes it easy to miss diseased lesions.

“What’s the likelihood of finding the needle in the haystack?” said Selaru, an assistant professor in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. “Based on a small sample, you can’t always draw accurate inferences. We need to be able to do a larger statistical sampling of the tissue. That’s what would give us enough statistical power to draw a conclusion, which, in essence, is what we’re trying to do with the microgrippers. We could deploy hundreds or even thousands of these grippers to get more samples and a better idea of what kind of or whether a disease is present.”

This photo shows dozens of dust-sized grippers in a vial. Image credit: Evin Gultepe, Gracias Lab, Johns Hopkins University

Although each mu-gripper can grab a much smaller tissue sample than larger biopsy tools, the researchers said each gripper can retrieve enough cells for effective microscopic inspection and genetic analysis. Armed with this information, they said, the patient’s physician could be better prepared to diagnose and treat the patient.

This approach would be possible through the latest application of the Gracias lab’s self-assembling tiny surgical tools, which can be activated by heat or chemicals, without relying on electrical wires, tubes, batteries or tethers. The low-cost devices are fabricated through photolithography, the same process used to make computer chips. Their fingerlike projections are made of materials that would normally curl inward, but the team adds a polymer resin to give the joints rigidity and to keep the digits from closing.

Prior to a biopsy, the grippers are kept on ice, so that the fingers remain in this extended position. An endoscopy tool then is used to insert hundreds of grippers into the area targeted for a biopsy. Within about five minutes, the warmth of the body causes the polymer coating to soften, and the fingers curl inward to grasp some tissue. A magnetic tool is then inserted to retrieve them.

Although the animal testing results are promising, the researchers said the process will require further refinement before human testing can begin. “The next step is improving how we deploy the grippers,” Selaru said. “The concept is sound, but we still need to address some of the details. The other thing we need to do is thorough safety studies.”

Further development can be costly, however. The team has applied for grants to fund advances in the project, which is protected by provisional patents obtained through the Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer Office. Biotechnology investors might also help move the project forward. “It is more a question of money than time as to how long it will take before we could use this in human patients,” Selaru said

Along with Gracias and Selaru, the Johns Hopkins researchers who contributed significantly to the two journal articles were Evin Gultepe, Sumitaka Yamanaka, Eun Shin and Anthony Kalloo. Additional contributors were Kate E. Laflin, Sachin Kadam, Yoosun Shim, Alexandru V. Olaru, Berkeley Limketkai, Mouen A. Khashab and Jatinder S. Randhawa. The researchers are affiliated with the School of Medicine, the Whiting School of Engineering and the Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology.

Funding for this research has come from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Flight Attendants Medical Research Institute and the Broad Medical Research Institute.

The Advanced Materials journal article can be viewed here:
Biopsy with thermally-responsive untethered microtools, E. Gultepe, J. S. Randhawa, S. Kadam, S. Yamanaka, F. M. Selaru, E. J. Shin, A. N. Kalloo, D. H. Gracias, Advanced Materials 25, 4, 514-519 (2013) (Video Link: Deployment of the mu-grippers) (Video Link: Retrieval of the mu-grippers)

The Gastroenterology journal article and accompanying video can be viewed here:
Biologic tissue sampling with untethered microgrippers, E. Gultepe, S. Yamanaka, K. E. Laflin, S. Kadam, Y.S. Shim, A. V. Olaru,  B. Limketkai, M. A. Khashab, A. N. Kalloo, D. H. Gracias, F. M. Selaru, Gastroenterology 144, 4, 691-693 (2013).

Related links:
Gracias Lab: http://www.jhu.edu/chembe/gracias/
Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/gastroenterology_hepatology
Whiting School of Engineering: http://engineering.jhu.edu
School of Medicine: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/som/
Institute for NanoBioTechnology: http://inbt.jhu.edu/

###

Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/. Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

April 16, 2013
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT: Amy Lunday
Office: 443-287-9960
Cell: 410-804-2551
acl@jhu.edu

Three undergraduate researchers at The Johns Hopkins University are among the 271 students recently awarded Goldwater Scholarships for the 2013-2014 academic year. The one- and two-year funding the three Johns Hopkins students receive will help further their investigations in molecular dynamics, the biomedical science of disease, and developing a computational tool to help surgeons treat epilepsy.

The merit-based scholarships cover the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board up to a maximum of $7,500 per year. The Goldwater Foundation, which grants the scholarships, is a federally endowed agency established in 1986. The program honoring the late Sen. Barry M. Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. The Goldwater Scholarship is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields. The foundation has awarded 6,550 scholarships worth approximately $40 million since the first awards were given out in 1989.

The three Johns Hopkins Goldwater Scholars are:

Stephen Filippone is a junior majoring in materials science and engineering in the Whiting School of Engineering. Filippone’s Goldwater funding will support his research project performing molecular dynamics simulations on polymer (amorphous) systems to investigate void growth morphology in the lab of Michael Falk, an associate professor of materials science and engineering. Polymers have applications in every technology from medicine to electronics. By better understanding the physics of their deformation we can control their properties and make better devices. Filippone’s past research projects include summers at Vanderbilt and Northwestern universities, studying ways to increase the flexural strength of cement to reduce the amount of reinforcement needed in construction, and studying the performance of graphene capacitors over large-area graphene. He hopes to pursue a doctorate in materials science and engineering. Filippone is from Los Fresnos, Texas.

Peter Kalugin, is a sophomore majoring in both molecular and cellular biology and mathematics in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. His research training in the cell biology of medical problems includes work in labs studying diabetes and polycystic kidney disease. During the 2012-13 academic year, Kalugin has been studying at the University of Oxford through the Hopkins St. Anne’s, Oxford Pre-Med Programs, which allows several sophomores and juniors planning a career in medicine to spend a year abroad at St. Anne’s College. Upon his return to Johns Hopkins in the fall, he will conduct research in the lab of Takanari Inoue, an assistant professor in the Department of Cell Biology at the School of Medicine. Kalugin aspires to be a physician-scientist to continue his research in biomedical science. He is originally from Russia, and currently lives in Albuquerque, N.M.

Sandya Subramanian, a junior majoring in biomedical engineering and applied math in the Whiting School. Her Goldwater funding will support her research with Sridevi Sarma, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, to design a computational tool to assist clinicians in identifying the epileptogenic zone in patients with medically refractory epilepsy, or epilepsy that doesn’t respond to medication. The team has applied for a provisional patent for the device for use in guiding surgical interventions. Subramanian plans to pursue a doctorate in biomedical engineering, with a focus on computational and analytic methods to solve biomedical problems. She is from Grand Rapids, Mich.

The Goldwater Scholars were selected on the basis of academic merit from a field of 1,107 mathematics, science, and engineering students who were nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide. One hundred seventy-six of the Scholars are men, 95 are women, and most intend to obtain a PhD.

###

Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://releases.jhu.edu/
Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

]]> http://releases.jhu.edu/2013/04/16/goldwater-scholarships/feed/ 0 http://releases.jhu.edu/2013/04/16/turning-algae-into-clean-energy-and-fish-food-helping-africans-to-irrigate-crops/ http://releases.jhu.edu/2013/04/16/turning-algae-into-clean-energy-and-fish-food-helping-africans-to-irrigate-crops/#comments Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:29:00 +0000 phil http://releases.jhu.edu/?p=8820 Two Johns Hopkins Student Teams Will Present ‘Green’ Projects on D.C.’s National Mall

April 16, 2013
Media Contact: Phil Sneiderman
Office: (443) 287-9960
Cell: (410) 299-7462
prs@jhu.edu

Could algae that feast on wastewater produce clean bio-fuels and a healthful supply of fish food? Can impoverished African community gardeners learn to use and maintain a simple centuries-old, non-electric water pump to grow more vegetables?

Two Johns Hopkins student teams are working hard to move these “green” ideas off the drawing board and into the real world. Both teams will showcase their progress at the 2013 National Sustainable Design Expo, scheduled April 18 and 19, in Washington, D.C. The event, which will be open to the public on the National Mall, is sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which provided $15,000 initial grants to each of the Johns Hopkins teams and to more than 40 other students groups that will also participate.

During the Expo, student teams will compete for follow-up grants of up to $90,000 to bring their concepts closer to real-world applications. The awards are part of an EPA program called P3: People, Prosperity and Planet Student Design Competition for Sustainability.

Integration of Waste Treatment with Algal Cultivation for Sustainable Aquaculture Feed and Renewable Biofuel

One of the Johns Hopkins student projects focuses on growing large masses of algae to address three sustainability issues: pollution control, the limited supply of fossil fuels and production of healthy food. This team, dubbed AlgaFuture, is composed of undergraduates and graduate students from the departments of Geography and Environmental Engineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Their goal is to deploy algae at wastewater treatment facilities to feed on hard-to-remove pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus, which are found in human and animal waste and in agricultural runoff containing fertilizer. If algae can flourish while dining on these pollutants, the plant-like organisms could then be used to produce renewable bio-fuels or food for fish farms.

But the process is not as simple as it sounds. “Wastewater can contain pathogens and dangerous metals like mercury, chromium and arsenic,” said Pavlo Bohutskyi, an environmental engineering doctoral student and leader of this team. “If algae grow in these materials and then are eaten by fish, is it safe for us to eat these fish?”

At the same time, the pathogens in wastewater, such as viruses, fungi and bacteria, could destroy the algae themselves and thwart the plans to produce biofuels and fish food. With an initial EPA grant, the student team tested 20 species of algae. “We found two strains that can grow well alongside pathogens and one that is already present in wastewater samples,” Bohutskyi said.

If the team receives one of the additional EPA grants, he said, the students plan to do further studies to see whether fish food or biofuel production is the most economically viable use for algae grown in wastewater. Their faculty advisers are Edward Bouwer, professor and chair of the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, and Michael Betenbaugh, professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Both departments are within the university’s Whiting School of Engineering.

The other Johns Hopkins team aims to improve the irrigation of vegetable gardens that provide nutrition and income for families in remote rural communities in South Africa. In these areas, women and children often spend hours each day hauling heavy containers of water from the local stream for drinking and to water crop-growing sites up to a half-mile away.

Alcock Ram Pump Diagram

Since 2006, students with the Johns Hopkins chapter of Engineers Without Borders-USA (EWB-USA) have journeyed to Africa to help install low-cost ram pumps, devices that date back to the 1700s and do not require electricity or fuel. Instead, they use the kinetic energy of flowing stream water to power the lifting of a fraction of this water to a higher elevation. The process eliminates current practices of hand-carrying water and provides much needed irrigation water for the cultivation of winter vegetables. In an additional effort aimed at sustaining the benefits from the EWB-USA effort, a team of undergraduate and graduate environmental engineering students obtained an initial EPA grant to develop a new understanding of pump performance and repair and to help plan sustainable “service centers.” The goal is to enable the community gardeners to maintain and repair their pumps. The focus is on a particularly inexpensive, appropriate and robust type of ram pump designed by a South African named David Alcock.

“We’re working on detailed descriptions of the pump parts and how the pump can be assembled and how it can operate most efficiently,” said Emily Prosser, an undergraduate environmental engineering student who is helping to lead the team. Dano Wilusz, a graduate student member, has been assisting with the plans for the project’s next phase. He added, “We’ve also been working with the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and South African partners to plan different types of government-supported service centers that could provide advice, spare parts and other help to the community in running these irrigation systems. It’s important because the water allows the farmers to grow more vegetables during dry seasons for their own use and for sale to others.”

If this team is awarded one of the EPA’s follow-up grants, the funds will be used to help open and evaluate two of the proposed service centers in South Africa. The students’ long-range goal is to create a model sustainability program that could be used to enable farmers and community gardeners in other regions to run their own ram pump irrigations systems without relying on outside assistance groups.

The faculty adviser to the student ram pump team is William Ball, a professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering. A co-investigator for Phase II is Dipankar Chakravarti, a Johns Hopkins Carey Business School professor who will advise a business school graduate student assigned to assist with the set-up and evaluation of the service centers.

Both Johns Hopkins student teams will staff tables and be available to talk about their projects at the EPA’s National Sustainable on Design Expo, which runs from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 18, and from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday, April 19. The event will be located on the National Mall, between 13^th and 14^th streets, in Washington D.C.

###

Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/ Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

WHEN: Johns Hopkins Business Plan Competition presentations and judging will take place from 1:30 to 5 p.m. on Friday, April 12. Winners will be announced during a dinner and awards ceremony from 5 to 7 p.m., featuring guest speakers Matthew Daimler and Susan Daimler. Matthew Daimler is the CEO/founder of Buyfolio.com, a collaborative platform for real estate agents and homebuyers that was acquired by Zillow in October 2012. Susan Daimler is the co-founder of Buyfolio.com. She is continuing her work on the Buyfolio product as the director of partner relations at Zillow and the general manager of Zillow NYC.

WHERE: Hodson Hall at The Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus, 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore. Directions to event rooms will be provided in the main lobby. The business plan presentations are open to the general public. The dinner/awards ceremony is open only to invited guests and members of the news media.

WHO: Twenty-four finalist teams will present their business plans to judges in three categories: medical technologies and life sciences, general business and social enterprise. Each team is composed of two to ten undergraduates, graduate students or post-doctoral fellows who have devised a product or service they propose to sell. The finalist teams come from seven Johns Hopkins University divisions: The Whiting School of Engineering, the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, the Carey Business School, the School of Medicine, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, the School of Education and the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

WHAT: The business plans will include information on the need for a product or service, the range of potential customers, competition in the marketplace and how the company will be financed and will ultimately turn a profit. On Friday afternoon, each team will have about 15 minutes to present oral and PowerPoint summaries of their business plans and to answer questions from the judges.

PRIZES: In each category, the winning team will receive $6,000; second place, $4,000; third place, $2,000; runners-up $250.

WHY: The goal is to provide a chance for students to organize and present their ideas in a business setting and to encourage students to apply their ideas, concepts and products to develop enterprises and career opportunities. The event is hosted by the Center for Leadership Education, based in the Whiting School of Engineering.

CONTACT FOR THE EVENT: Pam Arrington, senior academic program coordinator for the Center for Leadership Education. Her weekday office phone is (410) 516-6741. On the day of the event, her cell phone number is (410) 802-1822.

More information about the competition can be found at http://www.jhu.edu/bpc/.

The hashtag on Twitter for the Business Plan Competition is #jhuBizPlan .

 ###

Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/. Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

When babies are deprived of oxygen before birth, brain damage and disorders such as cerebral palsy can occur. Extended cooling can prevent brain injuries, but this treatment is not always available in developing nations where advanced medical care is scarce. To address this need, Johns Hopkins undergraduates have devised a low-tech $40 unit to provide protective cooling in the absence of modern hospital equipment that can cost $12,000.

The device, called the Cooling Cure, aims to lower a newborn’s temperature by about 6 degrees F for three days, a treatment that has been shown to protect the child from brain damage if administered shortly after a loss of oxygen has occurred. Common causes of this deficiency are knotting of the umbilical cord or a problem with the mother’s placenta during a difficult birth. In developing regions, untrained delivery, anemia and malnutrition during pregnancy can also contribute to oxygen deprivation.

Johns Hopkins students designed this low-cost prototype to cool and prevent brain damage in oxygen-deprived babies in developing regions where advanced medical care is unavailable. Photo: Will Kirk/Johns Hopkins University

In a recent issue of the journal Medical Devices: Evidence and Research, the biomedical engineering student inventors and their medical advisors reported successful animal testing of the Cooling Cure prototype. The device is made of a clay pot, a plastic-lined burlap basket, sand, instant ice-pack powder, temperature sensors, a microprocessor and two AAA batteries. To activate it, just add water.

The device could help curtail a serious health problem called hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, which is triggered by oxygen deficiency in the brain. Globally, more than half of the newborns with a severe form of this condition die, and many of the survivors are diagnosed with cerebral palsy or other brain disorders. The problem is particularly acute in impoverished regions where pregnant women do not have easy access to medical specialists or high-tech hospital equipment. The inventors say Cooling Cure could address this issue.

“The students came up with a neat device that’s easy for non-medical people to use. It’s inexpensive and user-friendly,” said Michael V. Johnston, a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine pediatric neurology professor who advised the undergraduate team. Johnston also is chief medical officer and executive vice president of the Kennedy Krieger Institute, an internationally recognized center in Baltimore that helps children and adolescents with disorders of the brain, spinal cord and musculoskeletal systems.

For the past 25 years, Johnston has been studying ways to protect a newborn’s brain, including the use of costly hospital cooling units that keep brain cells from dying after an oxygen deficiency. Several years ago, while visiting Egypt, he learned that local doctors were using window fans or chilled water bottles in an inadequate effort to treat oxygen-deprived babies. When he returned to Baltimore, Johnston and Ryan Lee, a pediatric neurologist and postdoctoral fellow at Kennedy Krieger, discussed the problem with Robert Allen, a Johns Hopkins associate research professor in a biomedical engineering program that requires undergraduates to design and build devices to solve pressing medical problems. Allen suggested that Johnston and Lee present the baby-cooling dilemma to biomedical engineering students in the school’s Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design.

Johns Hopkins undergraduates, from left, John J. Kim, Simon Ammanuel and Nathan Buchbinder were part of a biomedical engineering team that invented the baby-cooling device. Photo: Will Kirk/Johns Hopkins University

The challenge was accepted in 2011 by a team of Whiting School of Engineering undergraduates. With an eye toward simplicity and low-cost, the students designed a cooler made of a clay pot and a plastic-lined basket, separated by a layer of sand and urea-based powder. This powder is the type used in instant cold-packs that help reduce swelling. To activate the baby-cooling unit, water is added to the mixture of sand and powder, causing a chemical reaction that draws heat away from the upper basket, which cradles the child. (The chemical would not come into direct contact with the newborn.)

The unit’s batteries power a microprocessor and sensors that track the child’s internal and skin temperatures. Small lights flash red if the baby’s temperature is too hot, green if the temperature is correct and blue if the child is too cold. By viewing the lights, the baby’s nurse or a family member could add water to the sand to increase cooling. If the child is too cool, the caregiver could lift the child away from the chilling surface until the proper temperature is restored.

Last May, at a student invention showcase organized by the university’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Cooling Cure team presented its prototype, designed for a full-term newborn weighing up to nine pounds and measuring up to 18 inches in length. The team won the Linda Trinh Memorial Award, which recognized Cooling Cure as an innovative idea for a global health project. In August two of the student inventors were chosen to visit medical centers in India for a two-week trip sponsored by a group called Medical and Educational Perspectives. The group has also offered modest financial support to advance the Cooling Cure design project.

In recent months, three of the Cooling Cure’s student inventors—John J. Kim, Nathan Buchbinder and Simon Ammanual—have opted to move the project forward through animal testing and improvement of the prototype. “We’ve tried to continue this because we’ve gotten such good feedback from people,” said Kim of Santa Barbara, Calif., a leader of the student team who completed his undergraduate studies in December. “This is a nonprofit project. The main thing we want to do is to make sure that people in developing countries can benefit from this device.”

Fellow team member Buchbinder, a sophomore from Marlboro, N.J., added, “It’s not every day that you get to work on a medical device that could save lives and prevent disabilities in kids.”

Working with the Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer staff, the students and their faculty advisors have obtained a provisional patent covering the low-cost baby-cooling unit. In the near future, the student inventors hope to link up with an international medical aid group and begin human clinical trials in a developing region.

John Kim was lead author of the Medical Devices: Evidence and Research study. The co-authors—all Johns Hopkins student inventors and faculty advisors—were Buchbinder, Ammanual, Robert Kim, Erika Moore, Neil O’Donnell, Jennifer K. Lee, Ewa Kulikowicz, Soumyadipta Acharya, Robert H. Allen, Ryan W. Lee and Michael V. Johnston. The article can be viewed at http://www.dovepress.com/articles.php?article_id=11849.

Related links:

Johns Hopkins Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design: http://cbid.bme.jhu.edu/

Department of Biomedical Engineering: http://www.bme.jhu.edu/

Whiting School of Engineering: http://engineering.jhu.edu

Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer: http://techtransfer.jhu.edu/

Kennedy Krieger Institute: http://www.kennedykrieger.org

Medical and Educational Perspectives: http://www.mepjhu.com/mep/mep.html

#

Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/. Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

Concussions can occur in sports and in combat, but health experts do not know precisely which jolts, collisions and awkward head movements during these activities pose the greatest risks to the brain. To find out, Johns Hopkins engineers have developed a powerful new computer-based process that helps identify the dangerous conditions that lead to concussion-related brain injuries. This approach could lead to new medical treatment options and some sports rule changes to reduce brain trauma among players.

The research comes at a time when greater attention is being paid to assessing and preventing the head injuries sustained by both soldiers and athletes. Some kinds of head injuries are difficult to see with standard diagnostic imaging but can have serious long-term consequences. Concussions, once dismissed as a short-term nuisance, have more recently been linked to serious brain disorders.

“Concussion-related injuries can develop even when nothing has physically touched the head, and no damage is apparent on the skin,” said K. T. Ramesh, the Alonzo G. Decker Jr. Professor of Science and Engineering who led the research at Johns Hopkins. “Think about a soldier who is knocked down by the blast wave of an explosion, or a football player reeling after a major collision. The person may show some loss of cognitive function, but you may not immediately see anything in a CT-scan or MRI that tells you exactly where and how much damage has been done to the brain. You don’t know what happened to the brain, so how do you figure out how to treat the patient?”

K. T. Ramesh. Photo by Will Kirk/Johns Hopkins University

To help doctors answer this question, Ramesh led a team that used a powerful technique called diffusion tensor imaging, together with a computer model of the head, to identify injured axons, which are tiny but important fibers that carry information from one brain cell to another. These axons are concentrated in a kind of brain tissue known as “white matter,” and they appear to be injured during the so-called mild traumatic brain injury associated with concussions. Ramesh’s team has shown that the axons are injured most easily by strong rotations of the head, and the researchers’ process can calculate which parts of the brain are most likely to be injured during a specific event.

The team described its new technique in the Jan. 8 edition of the Journal of Neurotrauma. The lead author, Rika M. Wright, played a major role in the research while completing her doctoral studies in Johns Hopkins’ Whiting School of Engineering, supervised by Ramesh. Wright is now a postdoctoral research fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. Ramesh is continuing to conduct research using the technique at Johns Hopkins with support from the National Institutes of Health.

Beyond its use in evaluating combat and sports-related injuries, the work could have wider applications, such as detecting axonal damage among patients who have received head injuries in vehicle accidents or serious falls. “This is the kind of injury that may take weeks to manifest,” Ramesh said. “By the time you assess the symptoms, it may be too late for some kinds of treatment to be helpful. But if you can tell right away what happened to the brain and where the injury is likely to have occurred, you may be able to get a crucial head-start on the treatment.”

Armed with this knowledge, Ramesh and his colleagues want to use their new technology to examine athletes, particularly football and hockey players, who are tackled or struck during games in ways that inflict that violent side-to-side motion on the head. In the recent journal article, the authors point out that many professional sports games are recorded in high-definition video from multiple angles. This, they write, could allow researchers to reconstruct the motions involved in sport collisions that lead to the most serious head injuries.

The authors also noted that some sports teams equip their players’ helmets or mouth guards with instruments that can measure the acceleration of the head during an impact. Such data, entered into the researchers’ computer model, could help determine the likely location of brain damage. These results, combined with neuropsychological tests, could be used to guide the athlete’s treatment and rehabilitation, the authors said, and to help a sports team decide when an athlete should be allowed to resume playing. This strategy also may help reduce the risk to athletes arising from a degenerative disease linked to repeated concussions.

More research, testing and validation must be conducted before the computer model can become useful in a clinical setting. This will include animal experiments and the correlation of data from event reconstruction to make sure the model accurately identifies brain injuries.

Ideally, Ramesh would like to collect digital brain images from soldiers and athletes before they enter combat or join highly physical sports activities. “We would then be able to track a high-risk population and keep records detailing what types of head injuries they experience,” he said. “Then, we could look at how their brains may have changed since the original images were collected. This will also help guide the physicians and health professionals who provide treatment after critical events.”

In addition to Wright and Ramesh, the co-authors of the study were Andrew Post and Blaine Hoshizaki, both of the Neurotrauma Impact Science Library, Department of Human Kinetics, University of Ottawa, Canada. Funding for the research was provided by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and by the Whiting School-based Center for Advanced Metallic and Ceramic Systems. Ramesh is founding director of the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute, of which the center is a part.

Ramesh and Jerry L. Prince, the William B. Kouwenhoven Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Johns Hopkins, also are part of a team that recently received a five-year, $2.25 million National Institutes of Health grant to better understand traumatic brain injuries in order to improve methods for prevention and treatment. The principal investigator on the NIH project is Philip Bayly, the Lilyan and E. Lisle Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis.

Related links:
K. T. Ramesh’s Website: http://folio.jhu.edu/faculty/Kaliat%20T._Ramesh
Department of Mechanical Engineering: http://me.jhu.edu/
Whiting School of Engineering: http://engineering.jhu.edu
Center for Advanced Metallic and Ceramic Systems: http://www.camcs.jhu.edu/
Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute:  http://hemi.jhu.edu/

###

Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/ Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

Go on, admit it: you’re addicted to those deliciously frustrating, brain teasing puzzles called Sudoku. Since the Times of London ran its first such puzzle in 2004, Sudoku has become a worldwide craze, with everyone from middle school students to grandmothers sitting down with sharpened pencil and a puzzle several times a week.

Many of the newspapers and magazines that publish Sudoku assure readers that the puzzles have nothing to do with mathematics. But that is simply not true, according to a James Madison University mathematics professor who is coming to Johns Hopkins University in early March to deliver a lecture on that topic.

At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 5, Jason Rosenhouse will present “Taking Sudoku Seriously” in Room 110 of Hodson Hall on the university’s Homewood campus. The talk will be largely non-technical, and the general public is invited. Admission is free.

“Sudoku has nothing to do with arithmetic, certainly, but it nonetheless has everything to do with mathematics,” explains Rosenhouse, an associate professor of mathematics.

Rosenhouse will defend his statement with examples drawn from logic, combinatorics, number theory and algebra.

“If you enjoy solving Sudoku puzzles, then you might have more of a taste for mathematics than you realize,” Rosenhouse said.

The lecture is hosted by the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics at the Johns Hopkins University’s Whiting School of Engineering and is part of the school’s Centennial Celebration, commemorating 100 years of engineering at Johns Hopkins.

For information on other Centennial events, go here: http://eng.jhu.edu/wse/page/100-years

For driving directions to the Homewood campus, go here: http://tinyurl.com/394sm5v

A map of the campus is available here: http://tinyurl.com/b9xn5ay

On-campus parking information is here: http://www.parking.jhu.edu/parking_visitors.html

###

Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/. Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

A Johns Hopkins engineer who is designing cancer-fighting nano-size structures that could assemble themselves and deliver treatment to diseased tissue has received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation.

Honggang Cui, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Johns Hopkins, has been given this honor, which is accompanied by nearly $500,000 that will be disbursed over five years. The funds will support Cui’s research, which is aimed at producing a more effective and targeted way to provide cancer treatment.

Honggang Cui. Photo: Mary Spiro

A current method of delivering anti-cancer drugs is to enclose them in a nanoscale carrier made of natural or synthetic materials. However, Cui explained, this method presents several challenges. “The amount of drug that can be loaded into each carrier is very limited,” he said, “and even within the same batch, the amount of drug being delivered can vary from one carrier to another. Another problem is that the carrier material itself may have toxic side effects.”

To make this process safer and more effective, Cui is trying to eliminate the need for a separate, non-therapeutic carrier. To accomplish this, he is trying to coax the drug molecules themselves to form their own delivery vessels through a process of self-assembly. His team is developing new molecular engineering strategies to put together anti-cancer drugs as supramolecular nanostructures, meaning they consist of more than one molecule. “Such supramolecules could carry a fixed, full dose of the anti-cancer drug within each nanostructure, and this would minimize the potential of toxicity in the carrier itself,” Cui said.

Konstantinos Konstantopoulos, chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, said that “unlike the general methods that use artificial nanostructures as vehicles to deliver anti-cancer drugs or molecular probes, Dr. Cui’s goal is to produce nanostructures that are made of drugs or molecular probes that can deliver themselves. This novel approach, which requires cutting-edge expertise in the areas of chemical and biomedical engineering, nanotechnology and chemistry, will have a major impact on the field of drug delivery and cancer diagnosis.”

Konstantopoulos added, “This is a new and exciting research area. Dr. Cui possesses the necessary engineering skills, deep nanotechnology and chemistry insight, and creative scientific vision to become a leader in this multidisciplinary field.”

Cui completed his bachelor’s and master’s degree studies at Beijing University of Chemical Technology and Tsinghua University in China. He earned his doctoral degree in materials science and engineering from the University of Delaware, and then obtained postdoctoral training at Northwestern University. He joined the faculty of the Whiting School of Engineering at The Johns Hopkins University in August 2010. He is affiliated with the university’s Institute for NanoBioTechnology.

The prestigious CAREER award, given to faculty members at the beginning of their academic careers, is one of the NSF’s most competitive awards and emphasizes high-quality research and novel education initiatives. It provides funding so that young investigators have the opportunity to focus more intently on furthering their research careers.

Color photo of Honggang Cui available; contact Mary Spiro or Phil Sneiderman.

Related links:
Honggang Cui’s Lab Page:  http://www.jhu.edu/cui/
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering: http://jhu.edu/chembe/
Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology: http://inbt.jhu.edu/
Whiting School of Engineering: http://engineering.jhu.edu/

###

Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/ Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.