This week’s Science News in Review is filled with new discoveries. From advances in therapeutics for schizophrenia treatment to fish that can taste with their legs, news this week focuses on groundbreaking innovations but also provides a reminder to stay cautious when reading scientific literature.
A coding project that aims to challenge undergraduates to come up with creative solutions and present them to a panel of specialized judges. HopHacks — a competition that brings students passionate about computer science and engineering together — embodies all this. The competition fosters broad-scale innovation through its many tracks, from the open-ended general track to more specialized tracks such as the Patient Safety Technology Challenge and the Philanthropy Track.
The field of artificial intelligence (AI) has seen significant advancements, and this week’s review showcases some of the most groundbreaking developments in AI foundation models and their interdisciplinary applications. These highlights include a breakthrough in neuromorphic hardware that could improve energy efficiency in AI, AI surpassing humans in predicting odor, Google’s progress in detecting AI-manipulated images and promising uses of large language models (LLMs) for debunking conspiracy theories.
On Monday, Sept. 16, the Institute for Global Tobacco Control at the Bloomberg School of Public Health hosted Thomas E. Novotny, professor emeritus of epidemiology and biostatistics at the San Diego State University School of Public Health. In a talk titled “Paddling Upstream to Prevent Tobacco Pollution,” Novotny discussed the type of waste produced from tobacco as well as to regulatory actions that may prevent the continuation of mass pollution from tobacco products.
Immunotherapy holds great promise for the future of cancer treatment. By harnessing a patient’s own immune system to target cancerous cells, cancer treatment can be tailored to an individual’s specific cancer type — allowing for more personalized treatment. One key avenue of current research involves studying cellular organization within tumors to understand the role of tumor-associated macrophages: white blood cells closely associated with the tumor microenvironment (TME) and are thought to support tumor growth and invasiveness.
On Thursday, September 12 the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics hosted Michael Mahoney of the Department of Statistics at UC Berkeley and the International Computer Science Institute. In his talk titled “Model Selection and Ensembling When There Are More Parameters Than Data,” Mahoney addressed why modern machine learning models work so well in practice, despite even mathematical theories being unable to fully explain them.
Adnan Munawar, an assistant research scientist at the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics (LCSR), shared his progress on the open-source Asynchronous Multi-Body Framework (AMBF) simulator used for several applications in surgical robotics on Sept. 11. The talk shed light on the use of reactive digital twins for surgical environments. His paper on AMBF was published in the Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) program.
Every year, around 60 undergraduate researchers are awarded the Astronaut Scholarship by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF). The ASF is a nonprofit organization created by the Mercury 7 astronauts, and its mission is to support scholars in STEM fields as well as honor the legacy of American astronauts. One of these scholars, Neha Skandan, is a senior double-majoring in Molecular and Cellular Biology and Public Health. In an interview with The News-Letter, she spoke about her research journey as well as her time at the ASF’s Innovators Symposium & Gala, which honors the 2024 Class of Astronaut Scholars.
As the fall semester progresses, exciting discoveries continue to emerge across academia. This week’s highlights include a dye that renders mouse skin “transparent,“ a super precise nuclear-powered clock, new insights into cholesterol's role in heart disease and robots controlled by mushrooms.
The mistreatment and persistent exclusion of ethnic minorities, women, and other underrepresented groups from drug trials is a well-documented issue. In 2020, of the 32,000 individuals who participated in new American drug trials, key demographic groups were persistently underrepresented: only 8% were Black, 6% were Asian, and 11% were Hispanic.
As the new academic year begins, let's dive into the latest breakthroughs and discoveries by scientists and engineers around the globe. This week’s highlights include promising developments in HIV vaccine research, insights into the human microbiome, legislative strides in AI and Deepfake regulation, and the discovery of new free-floating planetary bodies.
The idea of free will permeates nearly every institution. We reprimand those who commit crimes because we assume that they have a choice to act in that crime. We award honors for academic or athletic excellence assuming that the winner had some agency that allowed them to achieve their talent.
For the past two-and-a-half years, Potluri has worked in the Calabresi Lab which studies possible treatments for Multiple Sclerosis (MS). MS is an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system, and as it progresses, it can result in extreme fatigue, muscle weakness, loss of motor skills, loss of vision and numbness, among other symptoms. It is the most common disabling neurological disease for adults ages 20–40, and there is currently no known cure.
The internet serves as a haven of scientific information, representing an era where the knowledge of anything we wish to know is available at our fingertips. Yet in many ways, accurate, firsthand accessibility to scientific research and comprehensibility of scientific knowledge is severely limited. A substantial overhaul is needed in the way that the general populace accesses scientific knowledge.
Although the semester is wrapping up at Hopkins, science endeavors around the world continue to yield exciting discoveries. This week’s Science News in Review covers new technology to identify the origin of metastatic cancers, the long-term effects of pregnancy complications, novel neural circuitry for food motivation and appreciation for a butterfly in the Amazon.
As the semester begins to slow down, scientific discovery has not. This week’s science news in review explores new findings from the James Webb Space Telescope, the discovery of a nitrogen-fixing organelle, an accident in molecular evolution and the legacy of Peter Higgs.
Researchers at Hopkins have used AI to achieve a significant milestone in the battle against COVID-19. The team has developed an automated detection tool capable of identifying patients with the virus from ultrasound images of the lung. This work furthers the use of artificial intelligence in the healthcare professions.
The microbiome refers to the whole sum of microorganisms in a particular environment, such as the collective sum of gut bacteria in a human being. As the field of metagenomics matures, scientists are increasingly recognizing the need for sophisticated tools and technologies to decipher the complexities hidden within these microbial ecosystems. Professor Mihai Pop at the University of Maryland gave a talk on the analytical challenges of microbiome science and how they can be combated by computational methods.
On Monday, April 8, hundreds of Hopkins students and community members gathered on the Beach to watch the 2024 total solar eclipse. Beginning at 2:05 p.m. and lasting until 4:33 p.m., the eclipse allowed viewers to see a rare sight: the moon passing between the sun and the Earth.
I came to Hopkins drawn to molecular biology and its incredible potential for growth and transformation. I am proud to say that my grandmother got me interested in biological development mechanisms. My lab — the Chatterjee Lab — studies the interactions between genes and various proteins involved in signaling pathways linked to cancer, inflammatory disease and cardiovascular disease.
