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.

Motivation at an Empty Olympics? Johns Hopkins Expert Available On Mental Aspects of Top Athletic Performance

The Summer Olympics in Tokyo, which officially begin today, will be held without fans because of COVID-19. A Johns Hopkins University expert on the types of motivation that influence performance is available to discuss how that might affect outcomes at the games.

Vikram Chib, an associate professor in Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, has studied the neural aspects behind performance, including what happens when people choke under pressure, and how having an audience can make you perform better.

July 23, 2021 Tags: Johns Hopkins University, Olympics, performance, spectators, Vikram Chib
| Category: Engineering, Psychology

JHU Awards Nearly $6 Million to Baltimore Violence Reduction Projects

Abuse intervention services for those with criminal histories of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), arts workshops to process trauma, and a community mediation initiative that will bring together Latinx immigrant and Black youth are among nine projects chosen to receive Johns Hopkins University’s Innovation Fund for Community Safety grant awards.

June 30, 2021 Tags: Baltimore, Innovation Fund for Community Safety, Johns Hopkins University
| Category: Institutional News

Anne Applebaum Available to Discuss Arrest of Belarusian Journalist

As world leaders protest the Belarusian government’s brazen interception of a plane carrying a dissident journalist, Johns Hopkins University senior fellow Anne Applebaum can describe the political situation in Belarus, and how the incident fits into a pattern of increasing authoritarianism in countries across the globe.

May 25, 2021 Tags: Alexander Lukashenko, authoritarian governments, Belarus, dissident journalists, Johns Hopkins University, political dissidents, Roman Protasevich
| Category: Government and Politics, International Affairs, Uncategorized

Researchers Find Semimetal That Clings to a Quantum Precipice

In an open access paper published in Science Advances, Johns Hopkins physicists and colleagues at Rice University, the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), present experimental evidence of naturally occurring quantum criticality in a material.

May 24, 2021 Tags: Institute for Quantum Matter, Johns Hopkins University, physics, quantum materials, quantum technology
| Category: Chemistry, Physics and Astronomy, Technology, Uncategorized

Johns Hopkins Launches Pandemic Data Initiative to Spotlight COVID-19 Data Problems

The Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center on May 17 is launching the Pandemic Data Initiative as a new resource to spotlight systemic deficiencies in the collecting and reporting of pandemic data, to examine how those challenges hinder COVID-19 responses, and to explore possible solutions to improve public data.

May 17, 2021 Tags: Beth Blauer, Coronavirus, Coronavirus Resource Center, COVID-19, data, Johns Hopkins University, Lauren Gardner, Pandemic, Pandemic Data Initiative
| Category: Public Health, Technology, University-Related

Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg Philanthropies Announce the Vivien Thomas Scholars Initiative, a $150 Million Effort to Fuel Diversity in STEM Fields

Today, Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg Philanthropies announced the launch of the Vivien Thomas Scholars Initiative devoted to addressing historic underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, and preparing a new, more diverse generation of researchers and scholars to assume leadership roles in tackling some of the world’s greatest challenges. The $150 million effort funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies will be endowed to create additional pathways for students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) to pursue and receive PhDs in STEM fields.

May 11, 2021 Tags: Bloomberg Philanthropies, HCBUs, Johns Hopkins University, PhDs, STEM, Vivien Thomas Scholars Initiative
| Category: Institutional News, Uncategorized, University-Related

Mimes Help Us ‘See’ Objects That Don’t Exist

When we watch a mime seemingly pull rope, climb steps or try to escape that infernal box, we don’t struggle to recognize the implied objects — our minds automatically “see” them, a new study concludes.

To explore how the mind processes the objects mimes seem to interact with, Johns Hopkins University cognitive scientists brought the art of miming into the lab, concluding that invisible, implied surfaces are represented rapidly and automatically. The work appears today in the journal Psychological Science.

April 1, 2021 Tags: brain, Chaz Firestone, Johns Hopkins University, Mimes, perception
| Category: Psychology

New Global Tracker to Measure Pandemic’s Impact on Education Worldwide

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted education for 1.6 billion children worldwide over the past year. To help measure the ongoing global response, Johns Hopkins University, the World Bank, and UNICEF have partnered to create a COVID-19 – Global Education Recovery Tracker.

Launched today, the tool assists countries’ decision-making by tracking reopening and recovery planning efforts in more than 200 countries and territories.

March 26, 2021 Tags: COVID-19, Global Education Recovery Tracker, Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins University eSchool+ Initiative, Pandemic, school reopening, UNICEF, World Bank
| Category: Education/K-12, Institutional News, Public Health, University-Related

Repeating a Grade? Johns Hopkins Expert Available on Best Ways to Make Up Pandemic Learning Loss

Schools, teachers and parents nationwide are now grappling with how best to help students who might have fallen behind after more than a year of interrupted learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In some districts, parents are being asked to consider holding children back a grade.

David Steiner, director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, is available to discuss how schools can help students make up for these missed months of education, and, how retention might not be the best solution.

March 25, 2021 Tags: COVID-19, David M. Steiner, Education, Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, Johns Hopkins University, Pandemic, remote education, retention
| Category: Education/K-12

Cells Can Walk a Microscopic Tightrope, Researchers Discover

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

JHU Engineers Develop Drive-thru Type Test to Detect Viral Infections in Bacteria

The pandemic has made clear the threat that some viruses pose to humans. But viruses can also infect life-sustaining bacteria and a Johns Hopkins University-led team has developed a test to determine if bacteria are sick, similar to the one used to test humans for COVID-19.

February 25, 2021 Tags: bacteria, Chesapeake Bay, ecology, Johns Hopkins University, Sarah Preheim, viruses
| Category: Earth Science, Engineering, Environment

Vaccine Prioritization Dashboard Launches for People with Disabilities

A new Johns Hopkins data tool helps people with disabilities determine when they qualify for the COVID-19 vaccine and compares how different states prioritize the disability community in the vaccine rollout.

Created by researchers, students and advocates who themselves are disabled and have personally experienced how inequitable and inaccessible the pandemic response has been, the COVID-19 Vaccine Prioritization Dashboard launched to not only help the disability community get vaccinated, but also to arm policymakers with data to improve the system.

February 16, 2021 Tags: Bonnielin Swenor, COVID-19, COVID-19 Vaccine Prioritization Dashboard, disabilities, Disability Health Research Center, Johns Hopkins University, vaccine
| Category: Government and Politics, Medicine and Nursing, Public Health, Technology

ADVISORY: Johns Hopkins Experts Available on CDC School Reopening Plan

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected on Friday to release guidance on the safe reopening of schools. Johns Hopkins University experts, including experts from the university’s Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, which has been studying the complex question of what it will take for the nation to safely return students to school, will be available for perspective and commentary on the CDC update.

February 11, 2021 Tags: Annette C. Anderson, CDC, Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, COVID-19, Education, Johns Hopkins University, Odis Johnson, Pandemic, school re-opening
| Category: Education/K-12, Public policy

Johns Hopkins Leads Nation in Research Spending for 41st Consecutive Year

Johns Hopkins University led all U.S. universities in research and development spending for the 41st consecutive year in fiscal year 2019, spending a record $2.917 billion.

February 10, 2021 Tags: Johns Hopkins University, National Science Foundation, research, research and development spending
| Category: Institutional News, University Administration

New Johns Hopkins Report Details Plan for Digital Equity in Baltimore

The lack of reliable access to broadband internet service for many in Baltimore, particularly the poor, has profound economic and social consequences. The COVID-19 pandemic has made this painfully clear with an abrupt shift to online learning, remote work, and telemedicine. A new analysis from Johns Hopkins University’s 21st Century Cities Initiative says the city could move towards digital equity, with a roadmap of recommendations built on existing knowledge of Baltimore’s digital assets and the experience of other cities.

January 25, 2021 Tags: 21st century cities initiative, Baltimore, broadband, COVID-19, digital equity, Internet, Johns Hopkins University, Mac McComas, Mary Miller, Pandemic
| Category: Business and Economics, Government and Politics, Public Health, Public policy, Technology

The Richer You are, The More Likely You’ll Social Distance, Study Finds

The higher a person’s income, the more likely they were to protect themselves at the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States, Johns Hopkins University economists find.

When it comes to adopting behaviors including social distancing and mask wearing, the team detected a striking link to their financial well-being. People who made around $230,000 a year were as much as 54% more likely to increase these types of self-protective behaviors compared to people making about $13,000.

January 14, 2021 Tags: COVID-19, economic inequality, income, inequality, Johns Hopkins University, masks, Nicholas Papageorge, Pandemic, poverty, protective behavior, social distancing
| Category: Business and Economics, Medicine and Nursing, Public Health, Social Sciences