Approximately 50 percent of patients with heart failure die within five years of diagnosis due to lack of an effective cure. Scientists are working to improve this statistic. Heart failure can be caused by several of the most common medical conditions, such as coronary artery disease, high blood pressure and diabetes, which can compromise the(...)
Levi Watkins Lecture Series to Feature Prominent Minorities in Science
Posted by Ryan Lang | Events and HappeningsMarc Edwards, Ph.D., has a vision for an innovative kind of lecture series at Johns Hopkins. The postdoctoral research fellow is interested in featuring prominent minority biomedical scientists and clinician-researchers from across the nation in a new program that he calls the Levi Watkins Seminar Series. “When I first came to Hopkins, I felt isolated,”(...)
May 15, 2015
Advocacy Through Occupational Therapy
Posted by Benjamin Oldfield | A Day in the Life“The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor,” said Rudolf Virchow, a German physician-anthropologist, in 1848. It was this framework for public health that motivated me in those early, molecule-based years of medical school. Ultimately, I thought my career would be more about empowerment than medications, with more attention given to social pathologies than(...)
May 8, 2015
Suicide: A Disturbing but Preventable Problem
Posted by Xin Liu | Did You See This?Recently on Facebook, I saw a post from my friend about her sadness in reaction to two of her friends committing suicide. The situation was even more devastating because both of them were only in their late 20s. Suicide has become a prominent issue, especially for young adults in our society. Surprisingly, according to statistics(...)
May 8, 2015
The CRISPR Craze: 3 Ways Genome Editing Is Changing Gene Therapy
Posted by Xuan Pham | Perspectives in ResearchGo to any laboratory, talk to any scientist, ask any graduate student about a technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and just about everyone will have heard it and used it before. In a few years’ time — if not already — the CRISPR-Cas9 system will likely achieve the same level of pervasiveness. CRISPR-Cas9 (clustered(...)
May 7, 2015
Locally Combating the Childhood Obesity Epidemic
Posted by Sylvia Owusu-Ansah | A Day in the LifeAccording to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents over the last 30 years. In 2012, alone more than one-third of all children and adolescents were considered overweight or obese. As health professionals, we are aware that patterns of daily behavior begin in(...)
May 6, 2015
Speaker Ta-Nehisi Coates Sheds Light on the Issue of Racism at the Inaugural JHU Forum on Race in America
Posted by Bree Yanagisawa | Events and HappeningsThis past week, the first ever “JHU Forum on Race in America” took place with speaker Ta-Nehisi Coates at the forefront. Ta-Nehisi, a prominent writer for The Atlantic, is an active advocate for contemporary issues. Though scheduled months in advance, the talk could not have come at a more appropriate time in Baltimore, with recent(...)
May 5, 2015
A Project Bridge Event on Multiple Sclerosis and the Role of Patient Empowerment
Posted by Alisa Mo | Events and HappeningsHere on campus, Project Bridge is a student organization that aims to bridge the gap between biomedical science and the general public. On April 16th, Project Bridge sponsored a Science Café event about multiple sclerosis (MS). MS is a disease that involves the central nervous system and results in damage to the myelin sheaths that(...)
May 1, 2015
Snapshot of a DNA Photocopier in ‘Hibernate’ Mode Reveals Potential Origin for Dwarfism
Posted by Shannen Cravens | Recently PublishedWhen attempting to elucidate the function of biological macromolecules, visual representations can be extremely useful tools. Often, these tools can help pinpoint the structural origin of a particular function and are invaluable for understanding how complex systems work. Sometimes it’s just easier to grasp something when you can see it. That said, obtaining these structures(...)
Apr 29, 2015
Project Bridge: Simplifying Science for the Community
Posted by Kevin Monk | A Day in the LifeHow many times have you tried to explain your research to a friend, only to get a blank stare back? Such was the case with Daniel Pham, a graduate student in the Department of Neuroscience working in the Meffert lab. Daniel first realized his problem while trying to explain his research to his boyfriend and(...)
Apr 27, 2015