I occasionally find myself walking through the dark underbelly of the Johns Hopkins medical campus along “designated laboratory transport” routes. These concrete tunnels allow researchers to transport equipment or mice from animal facilities to laboratories without passing through patient areas. I always feel a pang of sadness when I see stacks of dog food in(...)
Did You See This?
Revolutionizing with R3: A New Ph.D. Program Seeks To Train Scientists As Critical Thinkers
Posted by | Did You See This?During graduate school, it can be easy to get lost among the tomes of information that we all must memorize in time for our exams. This background knowledge helps fuel our research and lets us know what topics have already been explored so that we have an idea of the paths to take in our(...)
To Infinity and Beyond
Posted by | Did You See This?On Tuesday, Feb. 6, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy rocket, sending one of Elon Musk’s Teslas into space. The rocket has an awesome amount of power, with nine main rocket engines and 27 total engines used to send the vehicle into space. This is the most engines a rocket has ever used! In fact, Musk(...)
Choosing to Be Irrational: How Neuroscience Incorporated Economics, and Vice Versa
Posted by | Did You See This?The Department of Neuroeconomics and Neuromarketing sounds like a title chiseled on the wall of a corporate division in a dystopian future; the highlight of a consumerism episode of Black Mirror. But Dino Levy, a researcher in this seemingly dystopian department at Tel Aviv University, was quick to readjust our preconceived notions of what his lab studies(...)
Developing a Laboratory Model for Inclusion Body Myositis
Posted by | Did You See This?If you were diagnosed with a disease, there are two questions you would immediately want answered: 1. How can we treat it? 2. What caused the disease? Those two questions are the foundation of my Ph.D. thesis. I study a muscle disease called inclusion body myositis (IBM), which is sometimes referred to as the “Alzheimer’s(...)
Fresh or Frozen Embryos? Equal Live-Birth Rates Among Infertile Women
Posted by | Did You See This?, Recently PublishedAbout 40 years ago (July 1978), Louise Joy Brown was born at Oldham General Hospital in England, weighing 5 pounds, 12 ounces. This birth may sound like any ordinary baby story, but the conception and delivery of Louise, the first human conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF), symbolized the possibility of having children for women(...)
Do You Want to Write For Us?
Posted by | Did You See This?Do you blog? Journal? Write in your spare time? Are you interested in pursuing communications at any level in parallel with your professional training? We need you! Biomedical Odyssey: Adventures from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is a newsfeed dedicated to showcasing the accomplishments of the students, postdocs, residents and fellows here at the Johns(...)
Last Year’s Resolutions — A Brief Summary of Some of 2017’s Greatest Scientific Advances and Discoveries
Posted by | Did You See This?The onset of each new year is frequently marred by overly ambitious and quickly neglected resolutions — an onslaught of new gym memberships, Jenny Craig enrollments, and Kindle purchases that will likely remain unread for years. New Year’s resolutions aside, the beginning of the year is a timely opportunity to reflect on how far we’ve come.(...)
Sleep: Our Panacea
Posted by | Did You See This?, Perspectives in ResearchHumans and animals share the most basic drives in life: the need for food and water, and the urge to procreate. Yet only humans have built a modern world in which these drives seem to cause more problems than they solve. Bookstores worldwide have dedicated whole sections to literature about reconciling your natural desires with(...)
Understanding NIH’s New Definition of a Clinical Trial
Posted by | Did You See This?The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) recent change to the definition of a clinical trial will go into effect later this month. The change, done in an effort to restructure and clarify what clinical trials are, will affect NIH grant submission deadlines on or after Jan. 25, 2018. Redefining Clinical Trails The NIH now defines(...)