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.
A Johns Hopkins faculty member who is studying how mechanical forces affect soft tissue within the eye has been named a 2013 recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award. The award to Thao “Vicky” Nguyen, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, will support research that may shed light on diseases and conditions such as tendon injuries, cardiac fibrosis and glaucoma.
January 7, 2013 Tags: collagen-related disorders, eye research, glaucoma research, mechanical engineering, National Science Foundation, NSF CAREER Award
| Category: Engineering, Medicine and Nursing, Technology
The Johns Hopkins University performed $2.1 billion in medical, science and engineering research in fiscal 2011, making it the leading U.S. academic institution in total research and development spending for the 33rd year in a row, according to a new National Science Foundation ranking. The university also once again ranked first on the NSF’s separate list of federally funded research and development, spending $1.88 billion in FY2011 on research supported by NSF, NASA, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense.
November 28, 2012 Tags: APL, Applied Physics Laboratory, Department of Defense, federal expenditures, Johns Hopkins University, Jonathan Bagger, NASA, National Science Foundation, R & D
| Category: Institutional News, Uncategorized, University-Related
Supported by a five-year $7.4 million National Science Foundation grant, experts at The Johns Hopkins University are partnering with teachers and administrators in Baltimore City Public Schools on a program to enhance teaching and learning in science, technology, engineering and math in city elementary schools by making STEM a community affair. The program, called STEM Achievement in Baltimore Elementary Schools – SABES for short — not only will benefit more than 1,600 students in grades three through five in nine city elementary schools, but could also become a national model for science, technology, engineering and math education.
September 25, 2012 Tags: Baltimore City Public School System, City Schools, Engineering, Greater Homewood, Highlandtown/Greektown, Johns Hopkins-Baltimore City Public Schools partnership, Katya Denisova, Lower Park Heights, Maryland Science Center, mathematics, Michael Falk, National Aquarium in Baltimore, National Science Foundation, Ronald J. Daniels, SABES, Science, STEM education, Technology, The Johns Hopkins University, Whiting School of Engineering
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Education/K-12, Engineering, Government and Politics, Homewood Campus News, Institutional News, Natural Sciences, Physics and Astronomy, Psychology, Social Sciences, Technology, University-Related
A Johns Hopkins biologist has been selected by the Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences (PULSE) as one its new Vision and Change Leadership Fellows, a group charged with spending a year identifying and recommending ways to improve undergraduate life sciences education. Joel Schildbach, a biology professor and director of undergraduate studies at Johns Hopkins’ Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, is one of 40 faculty members selected from 250 applicants from 24 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands by PULSE, a joint initiative of the National Science Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Institutes of Health.
September 19, 2012 Tags: Department of Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Joel Schildbach, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences, PULSE, science education, The Johns Hopkins University, undergraduate science education
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Natural Sciences, University-Related
A first-of-its kind study using the World Wide Web to collect data from more than 10,000 study subjects ages 11 to 85 found that humans’ inborn “number sense” improves during school years, declines during old age, and remains linked throughout the entire lifespan to academic mathematics achievement. The study, led by psychologist Justin Halberda of The Johns Hopkins University and published in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of June 25, is groundbreaking for presenting a picture of how our basic cognitive abilities may change across our lifetime.
June 25, 2012 Tags: ANS, Approximate Number Sense, citizen science, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Internet, Johns Hopkins University, Justin Halberda, Krieger School of Arts and Science, mathematics achievement, National Science Foundation, number sense, PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, psychological and brain sciences, World Wide Web
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Psychology, Social Sciences
The Johns Hopkins University performed $2 billion in medical, science and engineering research in fiscal 2010, making it the leading U.S. academic institution in total research and development spending for the 32nd year in a row, according to a new National Science Foundation ranking. The university also once again ranked first on the NSF’s separate list of federally funded research and development, spending $1.73 billion in FY2010 on research supported by NSF, NASA, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense.
March 30, 2012 Tags: Applied Physics Laboratory, Lloyd B. Minor, National Science Foundation, R&D, research and development, The Johns Hopkins University
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Engineering, Institutional News, Natural Sciences, Physics and Astronomy, Psychology, Public Health, Social Sciences, University-Related
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and in the case of an image created by astrophysicist Miguel Angel Aragon of The Johns Hopkins University, the adage holds true. His vibrant computer illustration, which won the National Science Foundation’s 2011 Science and Engineering’s Visualization Challenge in the “Informational Posters and Graphics” category, brings to vivid life many dynamic aspects of the universe, spanning 240 million light years.
February 2, 2012 Tags: AAAS, Adler Planetarium, dark matter Science, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy, Julieta Aguilera, Mark Subbarao, Miguel Angel Aragon, National Science Foundation, The Cosmic Web, The Johns Hopkins University, The National Science Foundation;s 2011 Science and Engineering's Visualization Challenge, the universe
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Institutional News, Physics and Astronomy, Technology
Financed by a $1.2 million National Science Foundation grant, one of the world’s fastest and most advanced scientific computer networks—one capable of transferring in and out of The Johns Hopkins University per day the amount of data equivalent to 80 million file cabinets filled with text—will be built on the university’s Homewood campus, with support from the University of Maryland, College Park.
November 7, 2011 Tags: Alexander Szalay, astrophysics, Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy, College Park, computer science, Data-Scope, datasets, genomics, Homewood High-Performance Computing Cluster, Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science, Jonathan Bagger, large-scale computations, Mark Robbins, medical research, National Science Foundation, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, petabytes, physics, San Diego Supercomputer Center, scientific computer network, turbulence, U.S. Senatory Barbara Mikulski, University of Maryland, Whiting School of Engineering
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Natural Sciences, Physics and Astronomy, Social Sciences
When legal commentator Nancy Grace and her partner danced a lively rumba to Spandau Ballet’s 1980’s hit, “True,” on a recent “Dancing With the Stars,” more was going on in the legal commentator’s brain than concern over a possible wardrobe malfunction. Deep in Grace’s cortex, millions of neurons were hard at work doing what they apparently had been built to do: act and react to partner Tristan MacManus’s movements to create a pas de deux that had the dancers functioning together (for the most part) like a well-oiled machine. That is because the brain was built for cooperative activity, whether it be dancing on a reality television show, constructing a skyscraper or working in an office, according to a study led by Johns Hopkins behavioral neuroscientist Eric Fortune and published in the November 4 issue of the journal Science.
November 3, 2011 Tags: Antisana Volcano, brain, Claremont-McKenna College, cooperation, cooperative activity, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, duet-singing, duetting, Ecuador, Eric Fortune, Gregory Ball, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Melissa Coleman, National Science Foundation, neuroscience, plain-tailed wrens, The Johns Hopkins University, the journal Science
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Psychology
It seems perfectly natural to expect that two motorists who depart from the same location and follow the same directions will end up at the same destination. But according to a Johns Hopkins University mathematical physicist, this is not true when the “directions” are provided by a turbulent fluid flow, such as you find in a churning river or stream. Verifying earlier theoretical predictions, Gregory Eyink’s computer experiments reveal that, in principle, two identical small beads dropped into the same turbulent flow at precisely the same starting location will end up in different – and entirely random – destinations. An article about the phenomenon appears in a recent issue of Physical Review E.
June 1, 2011 Tags: Alexander Szalay, applied mathematics and statistics, Charles Meneveau, computer experiments, Gregory Eyink, Hannes Alfvéen, Krieger School of Arts and Science, National Science Foundation, Randal Burns, spontaneous stochasticity, turbulence, virtual streams, Whiting School of Engineering
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Engineering, Homewood Campus News
Parents know the unparalleled joy and wonder of hearing a beloved child’s first words turn quickly into whole sentences and then babbling paragraphs. But how human children acquire language-which is so complex and has so many variations-remains largely a mystery. Fifty years ago, linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky proposed an answer: Humans are able to learn language so quickly because some knowledge of grammar is hardwired into our brains. In other words, we know some of the most fundamental things about human language unconsciously at birth, without ever being taught. Now, in a groundbreaking study, cognitive scientists at The Johns Hopkins University have confirmed a striking prediction of the controversial hypothesis that human beings are born with knowledge of certain syntactical rules that make learning human languages easier.
May 12, 2011 Tags: cognitive science, IGERT, Jennifer Culberton, Johns Hopkins University, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, language acquisition, language learning, linguistics, National Science Foundation, Noam Chomsky, Paul Smolensky, University of Rochester
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Psychology
Before the program ended on September 30, Johns Hopkins received $260 million in National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation research grants through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the federal stimulus act or ARRA.
December 6, 2010 Tags: ALS, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, APL, Applied Physics Lab, ARRA, cocktail party effect, federal stimulus act, global climate change, Jeffrey Rothstein, Lloyd Minor, Mounya Elhilali, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, ocean circulation, ocean currents, Robert Moffitt, Ronald Daniels, School of Medicine, School of Nursing, The Johns Hopkins University, the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Thomas Haine, Whiting School of Engineering
| Category: Uncategorized
Imagine a tool that is a cross between a powerful electron microscope and the Hubble Space Telescope, allowing scientists from disciplines ranging from medicine and genetics to astrophysics, environmental science, oceanography and bioinformatics to examine and analyze enormous amounts of data from both “little picture” and “big picture” perspectives.Using a $2.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation, a group led by computer scientist and astrophysicist Alexander Szalay of Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science is designing and developing such a tool, dubbed the Data-Scope.
November 1, 2010 Tags: Alexander Szalay, Andreas Terzis, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Data-Scope, Department of Computer Science, electron microscope, Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic, federal stimulus grant, federal stimulus money, high-performance computing, Hubble Space Telescope, Human Language Technology Center of Excellence, Johns Hopkins' Institute for Data-Intensive Engineering and Science, Jonathan Bagger, Kenneth Church, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, National Science Foundation, petabyte, Sarah Wheelan, School of Medicine, Scott Zeger, Whiting School of Engineering
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Engineering, Environment, Institutional News, Medicine and Nursing, Natural Sciences, Physics and Astronomy, Psychology, Public Health, Social Sciences, Technology
The Johns Hopkins University performed $1.85 billion in medical, science and engineering research in fiscal 2009, making it the leading U.S. academic institution in total research and development spending for the 31st year in a row, according to a new National Science Foundation ranking. The university also once again ranked first on the NSF’s separate list of federally funded research and development, spending $1.58 billion in FY2009 on research supported by NSF, NASA, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense.
September 29, 2010 Tags: Applied Physics Laboratory, Department of Defense, federally financed R&D, Johns Hopkins University, Lloyd Minor, NASA, National Science Foundation, NIH, R&D, research and development
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Engineering, Environment, Homewood Campus News, Institutional News, Medicine and Nursing, Natural Sciences, Physics and Astronomy, Psychology, Public Health, Social Sciences, Technology, University Administration, University-Related
The Johns Hopkins University has to date been awarded more than $200 million in National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation research grants through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the federal stimulus package. The 424 grants are financing investigations ranging from how the universe began to how men and women differ in their responses to the influenza virus to new strategies to prevent muscle loss caused by diseases such as muscular dystrophy. The grants also have underwritten the creation of 164 staff jobs, 32 of which are still open.
July 13, 2010 Tags: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, ARRA, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Charles L. Bennett, Cynda H. Rushton, federal stimulus act, Jeffrey Rothstein, Jin U. Kang, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Scott Zeger, The Johns Hopkins University, Whiting School of Engineering
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Engineering, Environment, Homewood Campus News, Institutional News, Medicine and Nursing, Natural Sciences, Physics and Astronomy, Psychology, Public Health, Social Sciences, Technology, University Administration, University-Related
If you think summer in your hometown is hot, consider it fortunate that you don’t live in the Turkana Basin of Kenya, where the average daily temperature has reached the mid-90s or higher, year-round, for the past 4 million years. The need to stay cool in that cradle of human evolution may relate, at least in part, to why pre-humans learned to walk upright, lost the fur that covered the bodies of their predecessors and became able to sweat more, Johns Hopkins University earth scientist Benjamin Passey said.
June 8, 2010 Tags: Benjamin Passey, bipedalism, caliche, Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation, carbonate materials, climate, fossils, fur, geochemical, hot climate, Human evolution, ice age, Johns Hopkins University, Kenya, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, National Science Foundation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sedimentary rock, sweating, thermal hypothesis, Turkana Basin, walking upright
| Category: Environment, Natural Sciences
A team led by Johns Hopkins astrophysicist Charles L. Bennett has won a $5 million National Science Foundation grant – administered through the stimulus act – to build an instrument designed to probe what happened during the universe’s first trillionth of a second, when it suddenly grew from submicroscopic to astronomical size in far less than time than it takes to blink your eye.
March 15, 2010 Tags: ARRA, astronomy, astrophysics, Charles Bennett, CLASS, COBE, cosmic background radiation, cosmos, gravitational waves, inflation, job creation, Johns Hopkins, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, National Science Foundation, origins of the universe, space, stimulus act, telescope, WMAP
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Institutional News, Natural Sciences, Physics and Astronomy
