Adventures from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
In 1796, an English scientist by the name of Edward Jenner expounded on the observation that milkmaids were generally immune to smallpox. He inoculated people with pus from cowpox blisters from the hands of milkmaids as a method to prevent smallpox, and the concept of vaccination was born. Many radical advances in medicine happen in(...)
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(...)
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s…the Science & Entertainment Exchange? Ann Merchant swooped into the February Telling Stories About Science seminar with an origin story in hand and prepared to engage. The goal of this seminar program is to invite professionals with a wide variety of backgrounds and expertise to give monthly seminars on(...)
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(...)
You are on a roll. In the morning, you delivered a compelling business proposal. You were the center of attention at lunch and your colleagues loved your witty remarks. In the afternoon meeting, you stood your ground and brilliantly defended your case with irrefutable arguments. When it’s your day, you feel invincible. What gives you(...)
Glioblastoma research is similar to superhero film plots. How, you may ask? If each superhero represents a different treatment drug, then we as researchers want to cause destruction of the cancer cells with the least number of superheroes possible. This is because we wouldn’t want patients to need to take a large cocktail of treatments(...)
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(...)
Stepping into the Anne and Mike Armstrong Medical Education Building (AMEB), you can always count on Aisha to brighten your day. Born and raised in Baltimore, Aisha has worked at Johns Hopkins since 2009, and recently changed positions from security first class officer to interim administrative assistant. Everybody knows and loves Aisha, who greets each(...)
Medical school curriculum has traditionally been split into two halves: preclinical and clinical years. Preclinical years generally include the first two years of medical school, when topics including anatomy, biochemistry and organ system-based physiology, pharmacology and pathology are taught in lecture halls. At most schools, clinical years encompass the last two years of medical school,(...)
A patient develops symptoms that cannot be explained. The doctor orders a myriad of tests to discern the cause. If cancer is suspected, the patient may go through a painful and sometimes invasive biopsy procedure to sample the tissue in question. But what if a simple blood draw could be used instead? This is the(...)