In the past week, Ebola has turned from a threat on a distant continent to something very real for Americans. Thomas E. Duncan is the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, as confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Sep. 30. Duncan died from the disease yesterday in a Dallas hospital.
Picture the Milky Way galaxy: our home, and the only galaxy that humanity has ever known. It is large and serene, a spiral of incredible beauty and unimaginable proportions. It is an inspiration to artists, philosophers and candy bar manufacturers alike. The earth resides peacefully in this galaxy, calm and seemingly endless — but the conditions of the Milky Way are far from static. In fact, our home galaxy will soon eat other galaxies and in turn be “eaten” — that is, merge with smaller dwarf galaxies. When this happens, life as we know it will cease to exist. This desolate finding was published recently in the prestigious journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, which is produced by the Oxford University Press.
A central tenet in biology holds that structure yields function. Whatever the cell does is significantly influenced by its morphology, or shape. For example, the morphology of neurons in the nervous system guides communication. On a macroscopic level, neurons talk to each other in circuit-like networks. Neurons with long axons (one meter or even longer) will be able to communicate with other neurons located far away, whereas neurons with short axons (one micrometer, or 0.1 percent of a millimeter) talk to each other in small localized circuits.
For over 15 years, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) has developed technologies to assist in the study of public health in order to detect and prevent the spread of disease. These technologies are designed to be easily distributable and open source, meaning that anyone can look at their design.
Contrary to what many Hopkins students seem to believe, a good night’s sleep is essential for optimal physical, mental and emotional functioning. Despite the recognized importance of sleep, the brain structures responsible for sleep regulation are still relatively unfamiliar territory. However, several research pioneers have started blazing the trail into the wilderness of the neuroscience of sleep.
Today it seems that nearly every industry has a product claiming to combat aging: supplements, skin creams, workouts, foods, juice, yoga and even pillowcases (which claim to prevent the skin from losing moisture). But many of these inventions leave much to be desired once their claims are evaluated in an unbiased way, and they produce results that are often far from optimal.
From the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa to the race to find a catch-all cure to cancer to the eminent flu season at Hopkins, public health issues are consistently at the forefront of the national dialogue.
For years, it has been known that diabetics are at a higher risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and heart attacks. In August of this year, though, the Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH) released news of groundbreaking research that sheds light on the link between diabetes and CVD. The risk of heart attacks in diabetics and pre-diabetics can be detected and monitored using an improved test designed to measure evidence of chronic heart muscle damage in diabetics and pre-diabetics.
The Ebola epidemic has been acknowledged as a serious international threat, but the efficacy of measures required to contain the outbreak remains debatable. This is due to the lack of resources in the most affected West African countries: Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
Perhaps the most interesting conundrum of neuroscience is the nature of human consciousness. How does the three-pound mass of spongy brain tissue composed of approximately 100 billion neurons drive all aspects of the conscious mind, from emotions to creativity?
People take their own lives at a rate of nearly one million deaths a year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). There are innumerable causes to this issue, varying from isolation, loss and abuse to even sunshine, as a research group at the Medizinische Universitat Wein, the Medical University of Vienna, has recently found.
Sure, the new iPhone 6 is equipped with a new retina HD display, A8 chip for greater power and a better battery for more juice — all tucked into a thinner container. However, these are not new buzzwords that we are just hearing today. A prettier display, faster processor, and longer battery life has been a constantly renewed promise by manufacturers since the advent of cell phones. The iterative improvements in the resolution and chips have become a tad mundane for the itching consumer anticipating the unpredictable. Where has the novelty of touch screens and double-digit megapixel cameras gone?
It’s now the age of the smartphone, and no one lets you forget it — not even the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met). Ranked one of the top 3 museums in the U.S. according to the 2014 TripAdvisor Traveler’s Choice Awards, the Met has just increased their popularity even further by releasing a new app for visitors.
This past August, tinted window films were applied to the glass of the Ralph S. O’Connor Recreation Center and the Glass Pavilion. Similar films were applied to the Bloomberg School of Public Health (BSPH) Wolfe Street Building in 2013. These films selectively filter the sun’s light, allowing visible light to pass unimpeded into the space, while reflecting and absorbing infrared light which would heat the interior of the buildings.
At the time of its release, iOS 7 was the first post-Steve Jobs product to come out of Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. To many, it signaled the start of CEO Tim Cook’s personal influence over the company and its products. Fast-forward one year later, and iOS 8, released Sept. 17, completes what iOS 7 began. Whereas the first update was mostly cosmetic and changed the look and feel of iPhones and iPads, iOS 8 brings with it a larger number of changes under the hood. This latest update is part two of Cook’s push, which began with iOS 7, for a simpler and more streamlined mobile operating experience.
Rob Phillips, professor of biophysics and biology at the California Institute of Technology, came to Hopkins last Thursday to give the third Robert Resnick lecture on his groundbreaking work in physical biology.
Imagine you’re sitting at Starbucks, absorbed in a textbook, studying for exams. The faint blip of a barista dropping an empty cup may not draw your attention, but the crash of a mug on the floor probably will. Researchers, led by Hopkins neuroscience and Psychological and Brain Sciences assistant professor Shreesh Mysore, discovered some clues as to how the brain decides where to direct attention. The group says their findings could help people with attention deficit disorder, autism and schizophrenia.
Though fewer children are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) today than in the past — one in 68 births, up from one in 150 births 10 years ago, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — many aspects of the disorder are still a mystery. Researchers at Caltech have been studying this mystery and have found neurons that appear to control social behavior in mice. If similar neurons exist in humans, then they may have found the part of the brain that controls autism, leading to more treatment options.
Vague, indeterminate and ubiquitous, the “Drink Responsibly” message featured in alcohol advertisements fails to explicate the details of safe drinking, instead promoting consumer loyalty to brands associated with such slogans.
Somewhere around 2.4 to 2.8 billion years ago life on earth began to produce oxygen, thus giving many aerobic organisms the ability to live on earth ... or did it? While many of the details remain the same, recent research has shown that life first gave rise to oxygen not between two and three billion years ago, but approximately 3.02 billion years ago, disrupting a theory that was long taken for granted. This research was performed by scientists at Trinity College Dublin and Presidency University in Kolkata, India and was published in the most esteemed geology journal, Geology. The researchers discovered that oxygen arose an astounding 60 million years earlier than previously thought, which is quite a significant amount of time given that humans have only existed for 200,000 years.
