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.
According to a Johns Hopkins earth scientist, the hole in the Antarctic ozone layer has caused changes in the way that waters in those southern oceans mix – a situation that has the potential to alter the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and eventually could have an impact on global climate change. In a paper published in today’s issue of the journal Science, Darryn W. Waugh and his team show that subtropical intermediate waters in the southern oceans have become “younger” as the upwelling, circumpolar waters have gotten “older” – changes that are consistent with the fact that surface winds have strengthened as the ozone layer has thinned.
January 31, 2013 Tags: CFC-12, chlorofluorocarbon, Darryn Waugh, global climate change, global warming, Montreal Protocol, Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, ocean circulation, ozone layer, Science
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Environment, Homewood Campus News, Natural Sciences, University-Related
October 17, 2012 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MEDIA CONTACT: Lisa De Nike (443)-287-9960 (office) (443) 845-3148 (cell) Lde@jhu.edu Andrew Watson, a Royal Society research professor who studies the carbon cycle and its connection climate change, will give the George S. Benton Endowed Lecture in Meteorology and Fluid Dynamics at The Johns Hopkins University at 4 p.m. […]
October 17, 2012 Tags: Andrew Watson, carbon cycle, climate change, George S. Benton Endowed Lecture in Meteorology and Fluid Dynamics, global resources, Homewood campus, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, The Johns Hopkins University, United Kingdom
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Events Open to the Public, Homewood Campus News, Natural Sciences, University-Related
The National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado has reported that there is less ice in the Arctic Ocean this summer than at any time since satellite measurements were first taken back in 1979, a finding that underscores the reality of global climate change. Johns Hopkins oceanographer Thomas Haine, who studies how the physics of ocean currents affects global climate, is available to put these findings into perspective.
August 29, 2012 Tags: Arctic sea ice, atmosphere, carbon dioxide, ecosystem, global warming, Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, NSIDC, The National Snow and Ice Data Center, Thomas Haine
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Natural Sciences, Public Health, University-Related
You are what you eat, and that seems to have been as true two million years ago, when our pre-human relatives were swinging through the trees and racing across the savannas of South Africa, as it is today. A study done by a team that included Johns Hopkins University geochemist Benjamin Passey and published in today’s issue of the journal Nature reveals that Australopithecus sediba, an ape-like creature with human features living in a region about 50 miles northwest of today’s Johannesburg, exclusively consumed fruits, leaves and other forest-based foods, even though its habitat was near grassy savanna with its rich variety of savory sedges, tasty tubers and even juicy animals.
June 27, 2012 Tags: Amanda Henry, Au. sediba, Australopithecus sediba, Benjamin Passey, carbon isotopes, evolution, geochemist, Johns Hopkins University, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Lee Berger, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, pre-human relatives, savanna, South Africa, University of Witwatersrand
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Natural Sciences
It seems that “Lucy” was not the only hominin on the block in northern Africa about 3 million years ago. A team of researchers that included Johns Hopkins University geologist Naomi Levin has announced the discovery of a partial foot skeleton with characteristics (such as an opposable big toe bone) that don’t match those of Lucy, the human ancestor (or hominin) known to inhabit that region and considered by many to be the ancestor of all modern humans.
March 30, 2012 Tags: A. afarensis, Afar region, Africa, Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecus afarensis, Berkeley Geochronology Center, Burtele foot, Burtele hominin, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Ethiopia, hominin, how humans learned to walk upright, human ancestors, Human evolution, Johns Hopkins University, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Lucy, Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Naomi Levin, Yohannes Haile-Selassie
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Natural Sciences, University-Related
A new species of dinosaur discovered near Green River, Utah, has been named for a Johns Hopkins University postdoctoral student and her twin sister whose geology work while they were graduate students at Temple University helped define the new species. Named Geminiraptor suarezarum for Marina Suarez, the Blaustein Postdoctoral Scholar in Johns Hopkins’ Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and her twin, Celina Suarez, now a postdoctoral student at Boise State University, the six- to seven-foot-long raptor-like dinosaur with large eyes and dexterous claws is thought to have lived about 125 million years ago, according to Utah’s Bureau of Land Management.
December 21, 2010 Tags: Blaustein Postdoctoral Scholar, Boise State University, Celina Suarez, Crystal Geyser Dinosaur Quarry, dinosaur, Geminiraptor suarezarum, geology, Green River, James Kirkland, Johns Hopkins University, Jurassic Park, Marina Suarez, Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Temple University, troondontid, Utah, Utah Bureau of Land Management, Velociraptor
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Natural Sciences, University-Related
Your mother was right: Fish really is “brain food.” And it seems that even pre-humans living as far back as 2 million years ago somehow knew it. A team of researchers that included Johns Hopkins University geologist Naomi Levin has found that early hominids living in what is now northern Kenya ate a wider variety of foods than previously thought, including fish and aquatic animals such as turtles and crocodiles. Rich in protein and nutrients, these foods may have played a key role in the development of a larger, more human-like brain in our early forebears, which some anthropologists believe happened around 2 million years ago, according to the researchers’ study.
June 9, 2010 Tags: anthropology, archaeology, bigger brains, bipedalism, brain food, David Braun, fish, fossils, hominids, Human evolution, Johns Hopkins University, Kenya, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Lake Turkana, Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Naomi Levin, paleoenvironment, pre-human ancestors, stone tools, Turkana region, University of Cape Town
| Category: Natural Sciences
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
