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.
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.
November 1, 2021 Tags: Andrew Gordus, artificial intelligence, Johns Hopkins University, machine vision, spider webs, spiders
| Category: biology, Natural Sciences
Johns Hopkins University engineers are the first to use a non-invasive optical probe to understand the complex changes in tumors after immunotherapy, a treatment that harnesses the immune system to fight cancer. Their method combines detailed mapping of the biochemical composition of tumors with machine learning.
October 13, 2021 Tags: bioengineering, cancer research, Immunotherapy, machine learning, Raman spectroscopy
| Category: biology, Engineering, Medicine and Nursing, Uncategorized
A team of Johns Hopkins University students are among the finalists in the Collegiate Inventors Competition for their invention of a device to reduce pain from nerve damage in people with amputations.
September 13, 2021 Tags: amputation, biotechnology, Collegiate Inventors Competition, Engineering, materials science, National Inventors Hall of Fame, nerve damage, prosthetics, Whiting School of Engineering
| Category: biology, Engineering, Student-Related News, Uncategorized
Johns Hopkins University scientists have developed a new tool for predicting which patients suffering from a complex inflammatory heart disease are at risk of sudden cardiac arrest.
July 28, 2021 Tags: artificial intelligence, cardiac arrest, cardiac imaging, cardiac modeling, cardiac sarcoidosis, Cardiovascular Research, irregular heartbeat, machine learning
| Category: biology, Engineering, Medicine and Nursing, Uncategorized
Researchers have identified a specialized protein that appears to help prevent tumor cells from entering the bloodstream and spreading to other parts of the body.
July 12, 2021 Tags: cancer, cell biology, cell intravasation, RNA interference, shear stress sensor, tumor metastasis
| Category: biology, Medicine and Nursing, Uncategorized
By offering cells a microscopic “tightrope,” Johns Hopkins University and Virginia Tech scientists have discovered a new and surprising form of cellular movement.
March 22, 2021 Tags: Brian Camley, cell movement, cells, Johns Hopkins University, nanofiber
| Category: biology, Natural Sciences, Physics and Astronomy
Scientists from Johns Hopkins University and Medicine have developed a possible new antibiotic for a pathogen that is notoriously resistant to medications and frequently lethal for people with cystic fibrosis and other lung ailments.
December 8, 2020 Tags: antibiotic resistance, antibiotic-resistant infections, Antibiotics, Communications Biology, Craig Townsend, cystic fibrosis, Eric L. Nuermberger, Gyanu Lamichhane
| Category: Academic Disciplines, biology, Chemistry, Medicine and Nursing, Public Health
A team of Johns Hopkins University researchers has developed a new software that could revolutionize how DNA is sequenced, making it far faster and less expensive to map anything from yeast genomes to cancer genes.
December 3, 2020 Tags: biomedical engineering, computational biology, Department of Computer Science, genetics, Michael Schatz
| Category: biology, Computer Science, Engineering, Technology
Researchers discovered that a specific brain region monitors food preferences as they change across thirsty and quenched states. By targeting neurons in that part of the brain, they were able to shift food choice preferences from a more desired reward (think: chocolate cake) to a less tasty one (think: stale bread).
November 4, 2020 Tags: Bloomberg Distinguished Professors, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, food, food preference, neurons, Patricia H. Janak
| Category: biology, Psychology
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.
November 3, 2020 Tags: bats, Cynthia F. Moss, echolocation, Johns Hopkins, prediction
| Category: biology, Natural Sciences
The brain detects 3D shape fragments (bumps, hollows, shafts, spheres) in the beginning stages of object vision – a newly discovered strategy of natural intelligence that Johns Hopkins University researchers also found in artificial intelligence networks trained to recognize visual objects.
October 22, 2020 Tags: AI, artificial intelligence, machine learning, Mind/Brain Institute, Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute
| Category: biology, Medicine and Nursing
A laboratory test developed by a research team led by Johns Hopkins University bioengineers can accurately pinpoint, capture and analyze the deadliest cells in the most common and aggressive brain cancer in adults.
October 15, 2020 Tags: biomedical engineering, biomolecular, biomolecular engineering, chemical engineering, Konstantinos Konstantopoulos, Nature Biomedical Engineering, oncology
| Category: biology, Engineering, Medicine and Nursing
Geneticists could identify the causes of disorders that currently go undiagnosed if standard practices for collecting individual genetic information were expanded to capture more variants that researchers can now decipher, concludes new Johns Hopkins University research.
September 10, 2020 Tags: American Association for the Advancement of Science, biomedical engineering, computational genomics, genomics, Genotype-Tissue Expression Project, National Institutes of Health, personal genomics, Science
| Category: biology, Computer Science, Engineering
The presence of an abnormal number of chromosomes in the genetic profile of early-stage embryos may be far more common – and potentially less threatening – during normal human development than is currently appreciated, according to new research from Johns Hopkins University biologists.
July 8, 2020 Tags: Biology Department, biostatistics, cell biology, Department of Biology, developmental biology, embryos, In-Vitro Fertilization, IVF, pregnancy problems, tests for pregnant women, women's health
| Category: biology
The Johns Hopkins University professor behind the popular COVID-19 tracking map is joining scientists at two other institutions to develop new methods for understanding how and why the current coronavirus and future pandemics spread.
June 11, 2020 Tags: Coronavirus, COVID-19, Lauren Gardner, National Institutes of Health, NIH grant
| Category: biology, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics
By studying how the tiniest organisms in the Atacama Desert of Chile, one of the driest places on Earth, extract water from rocks, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University, University of California, Irvine, and U.C. Riverside revealed how, against all odds, life can exist in extreme environments.
May 4, 2020 Tags: biology, extreme environments, gypsum, Jocelyne DiRuggiero, Mars
| Category: biology
Scientists developing a rapid system for tackling outbreaks of avian influenza at their origins in Thailand are available to discuss their project and how it could potentially help improve responses to other pandemic threats such as coronavirus.
February 12, 2020 Tags: Applied Physics Laboratory, Coronavirus, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Pandemic, SARS, World Health Organization
| Category: biology, Government and Politics, International Affairs, Public Health, Uncategorized
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.
November 7, 2019 Tags: drones, Johns Hopkins University, Mosquitos, Rajat Mittal
| Category: biology, Computer Science, Engineering, Natural Sciences, Technology
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.
October 10, 2019 Tags: biology, chromosomes, developmental biology, DNA, genes, Johns Hopkins University, Robert Johnston
| Category: biology, Natural Sciences
In cinema and science fiction, one small change in the past can have major, sometimes life-changing effects in the future. Using a series of snapshots, researchers recently captured such so-called “butterfly effects” in heart muscle cell development, and say this new view into the sequence of gene expression activity may lead to better understanding disease risk.
June 27, 2019 Tags: Alexis Battle, Engineering, gene expression, genes, genetics, heart muscle cells, stem cells, Whiting School of Engineering
| Category: biology, Engineering, Medicine and Nursing
Rewards are necessary for learning, but may actually mask true knowledge, finds a new Johns Hopkins University study with rodents and ferrets.
May 14, 2019 Tags: ainmals, animal research, behavior, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Kishore Kuchibhotla, learning, rewards, rodents
| Category: biology, Psychology
February 11, 2019 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Chanapa Tantibanchachai Office: 443-997-5056 / Cell: 928-458-9656 chanapa@jhu.edu @JHUmediareps Before the age of GPS, humans had to orient themselves without on-screen arrows pointing down an exact street, but rather, by memorizing landmarks and using learned relationships among time, speed and distance. They had to know, for instance, that […]
February 11, 2019 Tags: brain, James Knierim, location, Manu Madhav, memory, neuroscience, Noah Cowan, Ravi Jayakumar
| Category: biology, Engineering
A 32-year-old Greek woman is reportedly pregnant from an experimental reproductive technique that uses DNA from three people, the result of the first known clinical trial to use the controversial procedure to treat infertility.
Jeffrey Kahn, director of Johns Hopkins University’s Berman Institute of Bioethics, who chaired a 2016 U.S. National Academy of Sciences panel that examined the science and ethical issues raised by the three-parent procedure, is available to discuss the implications of this new pregnancy and the procedure, known as mitochondrial replacement therapy, which is banned in the United States.
January 24, 2019 Tags: Berman Institute of Bioethics, bioethics, biology, Jeffrey Kahn, medicine
| Category: biology, Medicine and Nursing, Public Health
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.
November 29, 2018 Tags: active sensing, electric fish, Johns Hopkins University, Noah Cowan
| Category: biology, Engineering, Natural Sciences, Technology
Monkeys who learned how to gamble have helped researchers pinpoint an area of the brain key to one’s willingness to make risky decisions.
September 20, 2018 Tags: brain, gambling, Johns Hopkins University, Monkeys, risky behavior, Veit Stuphorn, Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute
| Category: biology, Natural Sciences, Psychology
