In this competition involving freshman engineers’ inventions, batteries are NOT required – or even allowed. For a class assignment, 67 students from an introductory mechanical engineering course have built aerial vehicles that must move across elevated cables and drop a “payload” onto a bull’s-eye target five feet below. The challenge: these cable cars can possess no motors or batteries. All movement must come from mousetraps and rubber bands.
Recent news from The Johns Hopkins University
This section contains regularly updated highlights of the news from around The Johns Hopkins University. Links to the complete news reports from the nine schools, the Applied Physics Laboratory and other centers and institutes are to the left, as are links to help news media contact the Johns Hopkins communications offices.
‘Future of Suture’ Device Wins $12,500 Inventors Prize for Johns Hopkins Students
For devising a disposable suturing tool to guide the placement of stitches and guard against the accidental puncture of internal organs, an undergraduate biomedical engineering team from Johns Hopkins won the $12,500 first-prize Tuesday in the 2012 Collegiate Inventors Competition.
Plan to Turn Farm Waste into Paper Earns $15,000 Prize for Johns Hopkins Students
Three Johns Hopkins engineering students have won a $15,000 prize in a national sustainable development competition for adapting a traditional Korean paper-making technique into an inexpensive way for impoverished villagers to produce paper for schools.
Collecting Cancer Data in the ‘Cloud’ Could Lead to More Effective Treatment
Storing music and photos on distant computers via “cloud” technology is nothing new. But Johns Hopkins researchers are now using this tactic to collect detailed information from thousands of cancer cell samples. The goal is to help doctors make better predictions about how a patient’s illness will progress and what type of treatment will be most effective.
Helping the song remain the same: New insights about timbre could improve hearing prosthetics
By advancing our understanding of how the brain is able to recognize musical sounds, engineers at The Johns Hopkins University could help the makers of hearing aids and cochlear implants do a better job filling the sounds of silence.
MEDIA ADVISORY: Hurricane Sandy – Power outage prediction model was accurate
A team led by an engineer at The Johns Hopkins University and a geographer at Texas A&M University predicted approximately 10 million would be without power for Hurricane Sandy.
Computational Medicine Begins to Enhance the Way Doctors Detect and Treat Disease
Computational medicine, a fast-growing method of using computer models and sophisticated software to figure out how disease develops–and how to thwart it–has begun to leap off the drawing board and land in the hands of doctors who treat patients for heart ailments, cancer and other illnesses. Using digital tools, researchers have begun to use experimental and clinical data to build models that can unravel complex medical mysteries. These are some of the conclusions of a new review of the field, written by four Johns Hopkins professors affiliated with the university’s Institute for Computational Medicine.
MEDIA ADVISORY: Hurricane Sandy – 8 to 10 million cumulative power outages predicted
An engineer at The Johns Hopkins University is predicting power outages for 8 to 10 million people in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
MEDIA ADVISORY: Hurricane Sandy – 12 to 19 million people could lose power
An engineer at The Johns Hopkins University is predicting power outages for 12 to 15 million people, and possibly as many as 18 to 19 million people, in Hurricane Sandy’s path.
MEDIA ADVISORY: Hurricane Sandy – Power outages predicted for 11 million people
An engineer at The Johns Hopkins University is predicting power outages for at least 11 million people, specifically in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland.
MEDIA ADVISORY: Hurricane Sandy – Pinpointing potential power outages
An engineer at The Johns Hopkins University is predicting significant power outages for millions of people due to Hurricane Sandy, specifically in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
MEDIA ADVISORY: Hurricane Sandy – 10 million could lose power
As many as 10 million in the mid-Atlantic will lose power in the coming week, according to a computer model developed by an engineer at The Johns Hopkins University.
MEDIA ADVISORY: Hurricane Sandy – Predicting power outages
An engineer at The Johns Hopkins University is using a computer model to predict where and when the power will go out due to Hurricane Sandy.
Scientists Discover That Shape Matters in DNA Nanoparticle Therapy
Researchers from Johns Hopkins and Northwestern universities have discovered how to control the shape of nanoparticles that move DNA through the body and have shown that the shapes of these carriers may make a big difference in how well they work in treating cancer and other diseases.
Johns Hopkins Researchers Aim to Boost the Flow of Wind Energy into the Power Grid
Wind farms are a fast-growing source of “clean and green” power, but a key problem remains: the wind behaves erratically. On any given day, the air outdoors may move in powerful gusts or gentle breezes—or may not move at all. This leads to an uneven output from wind farms and makes it tougher for alternative energy producers to work smoothly with power grids that must send a steady flow of electricity to homes and businesses. To address these challenges, the National Science Foundation has awarded two grants totaling $6 million to Johns Hopkins researchers and their collaborators.
Media Advisory: Mukesh Chatter, Co-Founder of Nexabit and NeoSaej, to Discuss Entrepreneurship at Johns Hopkins Lecture
Mukesh Chatter will speak at a technology management lecture and award program established by a Johns Hopkins graduate and his wife. Mukesh Chatter, along with Priti Chatter, founded the telecom company Nexabit Networks, which was acquired by Lucent in 1999. They also are co-founders of NeoSaej Corp., a Boston-based Internet startup, Mukesh Chatter has more than 18 years of experience in the architecture, design and development of networking equipment and supercomputers and has several patents associated with this work.
Five Johns Hopkins Engineering Doctoral Students Named 2013 Siebel Scholars
Five Johns Hopkins graduate students who are applying the latest advances in biology and technology to the prevention and treatment of health problems such as cancer, cardiac disorders and sexually transmitted diseases have been named to the 2013 class of Siebel Scholars. The merit-based program provides $35,000 to each student for use in his or her final year of graduate studies.
Air Force Launches New Center at Johns Hopkins to Advance Structural Materials and Design for Aerospace Applications
The U.S. Air Force has selected a team led by Johns Hopkins engineers to start a new materials research center of excellence that will develop novel computational and experimental methods to support the next generation of military aircraft. The Center of Excellence on Integrated Material Modeling, CEIMM, will advance the Computational Integrated Materials Science and Engineering Initiative, which focuses on materials applications within a digital framework.
Collagen-Seeking Synthetic Protein Could Lead Doctors to Tumor Locations
Johns Hopkins researchers have created a synthetic protein that, when activated by ultraviolet light, can guide doctors to places within the body where cancer, arthritis and other serious medical disorders can be detected. The technique could lead to a new type of diagnostic imaging technology and may someday serve as a way to move medications to parts of the body where signs of disease have been found.
MEDIA ADVISORY: Engineering experts available to discuss Tropical Storm Isaac
Three engineering experts at Johns Hopkins University can talk about how the storm could cause coastal damage and power outages, and affect hospital functionality.
Could FastStitch Device, Invented by Undergrads, Be the Future of Suture?
After a surgeon stitches up a patient’s abdomen, costly complications—some life-threatening—can occur. To cut down on these postoperative problems, Johns Hopkins undergraduates have invented a disposable suturing tool to guide the placement of stitches and guard against the accidental puncture of internal organs.
MEDIA ADVISORY: Engineering experts available to discuss impact of hurricanes
In the heart of hurricane season, three engineering experts at Johns Hopkins University can talk about how the next big storm could cause power outages and coastal damage, and affect hospital functionality. Please hold onto this tip sheet and refer to it for sources as Atlantic hurricane season enters its peak.
MEDIA ADVISORY — Putting Pasta to the Test: High Schoolers to Compete in Spaghetti Bridge Contest at Johns Hopkins
On Friday, July 27, about 120 high school students, grouped in teams of three or four, will compete at the Homewood campus in the annual Spaghetti Bridge Contest, marking the culmination of a four-week summer course called Engineering Innovation. Using only uncooked spaghetti and epoxy, the students have constructed bridges that they will test in the contest. More weight will be added to each structure until the pasta bridge breaks. Prizes will be awarded to the teams whose bridges hold the most weight.
Undergraduates’ Cellphone Screening Device for Anemia Wins $250,000 Prize
Could a low-cost screening device connected to a cellphone save thousands of women and children from anemia-related deaths and disabilities? That’s the goal of Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering undergraduates who say they’ve developed a noninvasive way to identify women with this dangerous blood disorder in developing nations.
