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 group of Johns Hopkins University scientists has collaborated with more than 100 researchers around the world to assemble and analyze the first complete sequence of a human genome, two decades after the Human Genome Project produced the first draft.
The work is part of the Telomere to Telomere (T2T) consortium, led by researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI); University of California, Santa Cruz; and University of Washington, Seattle.
Johns Hopkins University researchers discovered precisely how spiders build webs by using night vision and artificial intelligence to track and record every movement of all eight legs as spiders worked in the dark.
Their creation of a web-building playbook or algorithm brings new understanding of how creatures with brains a fraction of the size of a human’s are able to create structures of such elegance, complexity and geometric precision. The findings, now available online, are set to publish in the November issue of Current Biology.
Vaping aerosols contain thousands of unknown chemicals and substances not disclosed by manufacturers, including industrial chemicals and caffeine, Johns Hopkins University researchers found.
The study is the first to apply to vaping liquids and aerosols an advanced fingerprinting technique used to identify chemicals in food and wastewater. The results, just published in the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology, suggest people who vape are using a product whose risks have yet to be fully determined and could be exposing themselves to chemicals with adverse health effects.
By offering cells a microscopic “tightrope,” Johns Hopkins University and Virginia Tech scientists have discovered a new and surprising form of cellular movement.
They can’t tell fortunes and they’re useless with the stock market but bats are quite skilled at predicting one thing: where to find dinner.
Bats calculate where their prey is headed by building on-the-fly predictive models of target motion from echoes, Johns Hopkins University researchers find. The models are so robust, bats can continue to track prey even when it temporarily vanishes behind echo-blocking obstacles like trees.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed a new method for producing atomically-thin semiconducting crystals that could one day enable more powerful and compact electronic devices.
By using specially-treated silicon surfaces to tailor the crystals’ size and shape, the researchers have found a potentially faster and less expensive way to produce next-generation semiconductor crystals for microchips. The crystalline materials produced this way could in turn enable new scientific discoveries and accelerate technological developments in quantum computing, consumer electronics, and higher efficiency solar cells and batteries.
Mosquitoes flap their wings not just to stay aloft but for two other critical purposes: to generate sound and to point that buzz in the direction of a potential mate, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have discovered. Their findings about the aerodynamics of mosquito wings could have implications for building quieter drones and for devising nontoxic methods to trap and exterminate the pests.
Biologists at Johns Hopkins University have uncovered an important clue in the longtime mystery of how long strands of DNA fold up to squeeze into microscopic cells, with each pair of chromosomes aligned to ensure perfect development.
The constant movement of fish that seems random is actually precisely deployed to provide them at any moment with the best sensory feedback they need any to navigate the world, Johns Hopkins University researchers found.
With $2.46 million in support from the National Institutes of Health, the Johns Hopkins University is teaming up with two historically black Baltimore institutions, Morgan State and Coppin State universities, to cultivate a diverse group of highly trained biomedical researchers.
By studying barn owls, scientists at Johns Hopkins University believe they’ve taken an important step toward solving the longstanding mystery of how the brain chooses what most deserves attention.
At holiday buffets and potlucks people make quick calculations about which dishes to try and how much to take of each. Johns Hopkins University neuroscientists have found a brain region that appears to be strongly connected to these food preference decisions.
Biologists at Johns Hopkins University grew human retinas from scratch to determine how cells that allow people to see in color are made.
Monkeys who learned how to gamble have helped researchers pinpoint an area of the brain key to one’s willingness to make risky decisions.
Although the popularity of solar energy has surged, the unpredictability of a weather-dependent technology has kept even more people from embracing it. A new Johns Hopkins University-led project hopes to change that by improving our ability to forecast sunshine and backup power needs.
The Johns Hopkins University, Lockheed Martin and Barclay Elementary/Middle School will come together for an evening designed to showcase the science and engineering projects that students have been working on in the classroom all year.
Johns Hopkins University researchers have developed a way to study the brain of a bat as it flies, recording for the first time what happens as an animal focuses its attention.
Thousands of molecules of ribonucleic acid make salt-loving microbes known as “extremophiles” highly resistant to the phenomenon oxidative stress – the uncontrollable production of unstable forms of oxygen called “free radicals,” which can negatively affect DNA, proteins, and lipids in cells.
Johns Hopkins University neuroscientists have found how the brain can detect an object’s value almost as soon as we see it.
When we try to stop a body movement at the last second, perhaps to keep ourselves from stepping on what we just realized was ice, we can’t always do it — and Johns Hopkins University neuroscientists have figured out why.
One of the two brain-training methods most scientists use in research is significantly better in improving memory and attention, Johns Hopkins University researchers found. It also results in more significant changes in brain activity.
Johns Hopkins University scientists are part of a research team assessing how a person’s genetic profile affects his body. The results could help show how individual genetic differences contribute to disease and guide treatments for heritable disorders such as Alzheimer’s, high cholesterol or Type I diabetes.