Our immune systems rely on antibodies to target pathogens like malaria parasites through their ability to recognize specific proteins and other tell-tale molecules. Mosquitoes, however, do not have these antibodies and rely instead on a recently-discovered gene.
The retina is a tissue lining the inner wall of the eye. The sensory cells, namely the rods and cones, of the retina pick up electrical signals from when the light hits the eyes, thereby allowing us to see the world.
Although agriculture may no longer be on the minds of Americans as much as it was in the 1800s, its importance in the American economy cannot be ignored. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the value of commercial vegetables in the United States last year was $12,820,274, while the value of field crops came out to $171,393,620,000. Not a small sum at all.
Hurricane Sandy is the largest recorded Atlantic hurricane in diameter. It started as a tropical wave in the Caribbean on Oct. 22, and then became a tropical depression. This means that groups of thunderstorms have organized and that there is very low pressure, especially in the center of these storms. Six hours after it became a tropical depression, it was upgraded to a tropical storm, defined as a storm with winds from 39-73 mph. It has also become organized enough to start to look like the pictures of hurricanes we see on The Weather Channel. It was upgraded to a hurricane on Oct. 24, right before it hit Jamaica. It went back into the water and built up strength, upgrading to a Category 2 hurricane before striking Cuba on Oct. 25. A Category 2 hurricane, with winds from 96-110 mph, can cause a lot of damage, especially to objects and buildings that aren’t firmly rooted in the ground. It weakened to Category 1 (74-95 mph) and then became a tropical storm on Oct. 27, but quickly moved back to hurricane status. It hit the United States on Oct. 29 at around 8 p.m., slightly south of Atlantic City N.J. It was declared a post-tropical cyclone around 7 p.m., which means that the storm system became colder and connected with cold-weather fronts.
If you’re lucky and your hometown is Los Angeles, you may have seen the crimson-colored, Honda FCX Clarity or silver Mercedes-Bentz F-cell station wagons on the street as owners drive by smugly, feeling great that the only emission coming out of their car is water.
Breast cancer will affect one in eight American women during their lifetime and 39,510 women will die from the disease this year alone, according to data released by the National Cancer Institute. These statistics have created a race to develop an effective screening method for breast cancer.
We all know that Hopkins alumni include a president of the U.S and a mayor of NYC, but who would have expected that one of our alums would end up snagging a space shuttle? After a nearly 20 year career, the Space Shuttle Endeavour recently completed its journey to its new home at the California Science Center (CSC) in Los Angeles. Hopkins alum Ken Phillips, Curator for Aerospace Science at CSC, was instrumental in bringing the shuttle to Southern California.
Busy making an impact on the world, Maunank Shah, an assistant professor at the Hopkins School of Medicine, gave a public health lecture this past Monday. Lambda Epsilon Mu hosted Shah’s lecture, “Infectious Disease Control: Bridging the gap between clinical care, research, public health, and health policy,” in Charles Commons.
On Dec. 15 this year, a team of Hopkins scientists will send a rocket on a 400 second journey from the historic White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico through earth’s atmosphere and beyond.
Jack Andraka, high school sophomore and Grand Prize winner of the 2012 Intel International Science and Engineering Competition, presented his research at a talk hosted by Beta Beta Beta, Hopkins University’s biology honor society, this Monday, Oct. 22.
Tech giants have vied for attention this week with many major announcements and unveilings, and Apple did not want to be outdone. At their media event on Tuesday, Apple recapped the successes they have enjoyed thus far with the iPhone5 and iOS6, the revamped iPod lineup, and the new software features to boot.
Who still remembers cringing from the high-pitched screeches of your grade school teacher pressing down on chalk a tad too hard? For those of you with younger siblings, what about the time when you were rudely awakened up in the middle of the night from the baby’s bloodcurdling screams?
The Institute for NanoBioTechnology held a mini-symposium on cancer research in the area of nanotechnology on Wednesday. The event, held in the Clipper Room of Shriver Hall, was an opportunity for several graduate students to present their projects in cancer research to others in the field.
Sleeping, eating and having sex all day — who wouldn’t want to have that kind of life? Australian koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus), widely known as the biggest sleepers in the animal kingdom, are doing just that. In order to digest the high-tannin eucalyptus foliage that comprise the majority of their diets, these cuddly marsupials spend most of their day (a stunning 16 to 18 hours) motionless.
With the election less than three weeks away, the Hopkins Undergraduate Bioethics Society (HUBS) hosted an open forum titled “Who has a better vision for healthcare, Obama or Romney?”
Steroid injections are a common form of relief for severe back and neck pain. Instead of comfort, however, patients who recently received injections may be facing a graver issue: meningitis.
This past Sunday morning, daredevil extraordinaire Felix Baumgartner completed a record-breaking plummet to Earth from 128,100 feet above the ground. To get an idea of how high that is, the camera view from Baumgartner’s helmet showed that the diver could see the Earth’s curvature from his vantage point. Carried in a small pod lifted by a helium balloon, Baumgartner rose to a distance of 24.26 miles. Through the mission, coined “Red Bull Stratos,” Baumgartner hoped to become the first man to break the sound barrier.
With another effort to push the boundaries of the local, sustainable living scene, the Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) recently held the grand opening for its new Aquaponics Project, based at the Cylburn Arboretum in Baltimore.
The 2012 Laurels for Team Achievement, presented annually by the International Academy of Astronautics, has been presented this year to the collaborators working on NASA’s Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER mission).
An easily obtainable nutrient, vitamin D, is essential to the human body. Moreover, a recent study shows that the level of vitamin D in the body seems to have an effect on the severity of multiple sclerosis (MS) attacks. The study, conducted by Ellen Mowry at the Hopkins School of Medicine, correlates low vitamin D level with symptoms from multiple sclerosis patients.
