The Gazette

o ur 4 0 th ye ar

a p l’ s ‘ weat h er ma n ’

LEADERS + LEGENDS

Covering Homewood, East Baltimore, Peabody,

Rich Giannola mines data that

PBS head Paula Kerger is next

SAIS, APL and other campuses throughout the

supports projects at the Lab and

speaker in Carey Business

Baltimore-Washington area and abroad, since 1971.

a national network, too, page 6

School lecture series, page 7

January 24, 2011

The newspaper of The Johns Hopkins University

A D M I N I S T R A T I O N

Nursing extends its outreach

Volume 40 No. 19

Q & A

Libraries in the information age Dean Winston Tabb on our electronic future and our changing facilities

By Greg Rienzi

The Gazette

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he Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, which already has strong local and international ties, wants to extend beyond its walls even further.

In September 2010, the school launched the Post created Center for Global Nursing to apply worldwide Johns to oversee Hopkins expertise in nursing community education, practice, research and and global related policy.

Closer to home, programs the school’s Community Outreach Program continues to be a big draw for students, and in the past two years, the number of community project sites has skyrocketed.

To help strengthen and grow these and related efforts, the School of Nursing recently appointed Phyllis Sharps to the new post of associate dean for community and global programs. Sharps, who will continue to serve as chair of the Department of Community and Public Health until July, began her tenure as associate dean on Jan. 1.

“Collaborations within our community are just as vital as our partnerships globally, and Phyllis has a demonstrated, successful track record for both,” said Dean Martha Hill in making the announcement. “We now have a position that will oversee the school’s outreach at home and abroad while constantly exploring innovative ways to strengthen our existing partnerships.”

In her new role, Sharps will oversee the School of Nursing’s community programs, its wellness centers and the Center for Global Nursing, which works with faculty and is administratively responsible for the school’s relationship with the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization, student study abroad programs, school-school collaborations, and special Continued on page 9

2

The Gazette

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inston Tabb likes a challenge, and he’s OK with change.

Tabb became Sheridan Dean of University Libraries and director of the Sheridan Libraries in September 2002.

Since his arrival at Johns Hopkins, he has accepted additional assignments, as dean of the university’s museums and as head of a number of arts initiatives.

As Sheridan Dean, Tabb directs the integration of new information technologies throughout Johns Hopkins’ libraries and serves as head of the University Libraries Council, which leads and coordinates the university’s entire system of libraries: the Welch Medical Library and its satellite facilities; SAIS’ Mason Library; Peabody’s Friedheim Library; libraries at the Johns Hopkins regional campuses and centers for part-time studies in Washington, D.C.; Rockville, Md.; Columbia, Md.; and downtown Baltimore; and the Sheridan Libraries.

The Sheridan Libraries include the Milton S. Eisenhower Library on the Homewood campus; the George Peabody Library on Mount Vernon Place in Baltimore; the John Work Garrett Library at Evergreen Museum & Library; Continued on page 8

WILL KIRK / HOMEWOODPHOTO.JHU.EDU

By Greg Rienzi

As Sheridan Dean of University Libraries, Winston Tabb leads and coordinates the university’s entire system of libraries. He also heads up JHU’s two museums.

S T U D Y

Teaching future docs the basics of medication errors B y E k at e r i n a P e s h e va

Johns Hopkins Medicine

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esearchers from the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center report that allowing medical students to play detective by watching, spotting and analyzing common medication errors as they occur can go a long way toward helping prevent potentially fatal mistakes in the students’ future practices.

The observational course, now taught

In Brief

Admissions apps up again; BSi grants $5 mill to JHU groups; student rush tix at Peabody

12

as part of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine curriculum, was piloted in the 2008–2009 academic year, and an analysis of its impact was published online Jan. 12 in the journal BMJ Quality & Safety.

The course was part of a nine-week pediatric rotation at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center during which 108 second-, third- and fourth-year medical students shadowed and observed doctors and nurses performing daily work on inpatient and outpatient units. The instruction combined personal observation

C a l e nd a r

Peabody Computer Music Consort; EP open house; Blackboard 9.1 workshops

of actual medical errors in the making, or near misses, and required students to deconstruct the errors, the investigators say.

Students began the course by watching a video of a child receiving the wrong medication. They were then asked to reconstruct the events leading up to the error, answering questions such as “What happened and why?” and “What can be done to prevent future errors?” The students then applied Continued on page 10

10 Job Opportunities 10 Notices 11 Classifieds

2 THE GAZETTE • January 24, 2011 I N B R I E F

JHU admissions applications hit record high for ninth year

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or the ninth consecutive year, the Johns Hopkins University Office of Undergraduate Admissions has received a record number of applications for undergraduate admission.

As of Jan. 18, 19,201 applications for the class of 2015 had been received, representing an increase of 742 applications, or 4 percent, over last year’s pool. There were increases in the number of applications from the South, New England and the West, along with greater interest in the social sciences (up 6 percent), engineering and natural sciences (both up 4 percent). The top-five countries for international applications were China, Republic of Korea, Canada, India and Singapore.

Decisions will be mailed by April 1. In December, 518 students were offered admission under the early decision plan.

BSi grants $5 mill to JH groups to study cognitive disorders

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he Johns Hopkins Brain Science Institute has funded a total of $5 million to 12 different research groups at Johns Hopkins to launch the new Synapses, Circuits and Cognitive Disorders Program.

The new BSi initiative aims to understand the fundamentals of brain function by focusing on the synapse—the point of contact between two nerve cells—to better understand cognitive disorders.

“Major advances have been made in our understanding of synaptic transmission and plasticity, and recent studies have indicated that the disruption of synaptic function underlies many cognitive disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia and autism,” said Jack Griffin, director of the Brain Science Institute. “At Hopkins we plan to push this research beyond its current limits to aggressively get at the heart of these debilitating and devastating illnesses.”

A list of the projects receiving grants is online at www.brainscienceinstitute.org/ index.php/research/research_areas/synapses_ circuits_and_cognitive_disorders-1.

John Bartlett and Chris Beyrer named to new AIDS board

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ohn Bartlett, a professor in the School of Medicine, and Chris Beyrer, a professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, have been appointed to the newly established Scientific Advisory Board for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR. The board will advise Ambassador Eric Goosby, U.S. global AIDS coordinator for the State Department, on developments in HIV/ AIDS research in an effort to maximize PEPFAR’s scientific contributions. The

48-member board held its first meetings on Jan. 6 and 7.

Bartlett, the Stanhope Baynes Jones Professor of Medicine, was for 25 years director of the Division of Infectious Diseases and has led the School of Medicine’s worldwide efforts to understand, prevent and treat AIDS. He was the first to direct clinical trials in Baltimore of new treatments that prevent HIV from replicating, and he pioneered the development of dedicated inpatient and outpatient medical care for HIV-infected patients. Bartlett co-chaired the national committee that drafted the first and all subsequent treatment guidelines for HIV-infected patients.

Beyrer has extensive experience in conducting international collaborative research and training programs in HIV/AIDS and other infectious disease epidemiology, HIV and STI prevention research, HIV vaccine preparedness and in health and human rights. He also directs the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health and Human Rights and the Johns Hopkins Fogarty AIDS International Training and Research Program.

Student rush tickets available for Peabody concerts in February

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limited number of free “student rush” tickets will be available for February performances by the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, the Peabody Concert Orchestra and the Peabody Wind Ensemble.

On Tuesday, Feb. 1; Friday, Feb. 11; Wednesday, Feb. 16; and Tuesday, Feb. 22, free tickets will be distributed on a firstcome, first-served basis to students from Johns Hopkins and other colleges and universities beginning one hour prior to each performance (7 p.m. for the Feb. 1, 11 and 22 concerts, which start at 8 p.m.; 6:30 p.m. for the Feb. 16 concert, which starts at 7:30 p.m.). Rush tickets may not be reserved in advance. The free tickets may be obtained, while they last, only by students who appear in person with ID at a student rush table opposite the Peabody Box Office at 17 E. Mount Vernon Place.

On Feb. 1, the Peabody Symphony Orchestra will play Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 and Peabody faculty composer Michael Hersch’s Symphony No. 2. On Feb. 11, the Peabody Concert Orchestra will present Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and Mahler’s Ruckert-Lieder, sung by contralto Kristina Lewis, winner of the Sylvia L. Green Voice Competition. On Feb. 16, the Elysian Trombone Consort will join the Peabody Wind Ensemble to give the world premiere of Doctor of Musical Arts candidate John Crouch’s Concerto for Trombone Quartet. Finally, on Feb. 22, faculty artist Marina Piccinini will be the soloist for a Peabody Symphony Orchestra performance of Ibert’s Flute Concerto.

For complete program information, go to www.peabody.jhu.edu/events.

Open House Saturday Noon to 4pm Editor Lois Perschetz Writer Greg Rienzi Production Lynna Bright Copy Editor Ann Stiller Photography Homewood Photography A d v e rt i s i n g The Gazelle Group Business Dianne MacLeod C i r c u l at i o n Lynette Floyd Webmaster Tim Windsor

Contributing Writers Applied Physics Laboratory Michael Buckley, Paulette Campbell Bloomberg School of Public Health Tim Parsons, Natalie Wood-Wright Carey Business School Andrew Blumberg, Patrick Ercolano Homewood Lisa De Nike, Amy Lunday, Dennis O’Shea, Tracey A. Reeves, Phil Sneiderman Johns Hopkins Medicine Christen Brownlee, Stephanie Desmon, Neil A. Grauer, Audrey Huang, John Lazarou, David March, Vanessa McMains, Ekaterina Pesheva, Vanessa Wasta, Maryalice Yakutchik Peabody Institute Richard Selden SAIS Felisa Neuringer Klubes School of Education James Campbell, Theresa Norton School of Nursing Kelly Brooks-Staub University Libraries and Museums Brian Shields, Heather Egan Stalfort

The Gazette is published weekly September through May and biweekly June through August for the Johns Hopkins University community by the Office of Government, Community and Public Affairs, Suite 540, 901 S. Bond St., Baltimore, MD 21231, in cooperation with all university divisions. Subscriptions are $26 per year. Deadline for calendar items, notices and classifieds (free to JHU faculty, staff and students) is noon Monday, one week prior to publication date.

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January 24, 2011 • THE GAZETTE

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A D M I N I S T R A T I O N

JHU launches national search for CTY executive director

By Greg Rienzi

The Gazette

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search committee was recently formed to find an executive director for the Center for Talented Youth to succeed Lea Ybarra, who will leave Johns Hopkins this fall after 14 years in her current role. The 16-person committee is composed of university administrators and faculty from across the divisions, and members of CTY’s advisory board and executive management council.

Pam Cranston, vice dean of the Carey Business School and vice provost for international programs, will serve as chair of the committee, which will be assisted in the national search by the executive search firm Witt/Kieffer.

Cranston said that the university expects

the next executive director to build upon Ybarra’s substantial efforts and provide the leadership necessary to retain the center’s position as the pre-eminent program of its kind in the country, and possibly the world.

CTY identifies top academic students in grades K through 12 and provides challenging summer residential programs, distance education and family academic programs.

The center also has special programs that prepare students to enter selective universities, and programs preparing them for careers in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.

Since its inception 31 years ago, CTY has identified 1.7 million students through its talent search program and enrolled 430,000 in its programs. Today, 70,000 students participate in the talent search, and 30,000 students from 120 countries enroll in CTY programs. The center currently has part-

nerships in Ireland, China, Mexico, Spain, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. Discussions are under way in South Korea, Albania, Egypt, Israel and several other countries to replicate CTY’s programs abroad.

The members of the search committee, in addition to Cranston, are Elizabeth Albert, director of CTY’s academic programs; Phyllis Aldrich, head of St. George’s Elementary School in Clifton Park, N.Y.; David Andrews, dean of the School of Education; Catherine Bradshaw, associate professor of mental health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health; Richard Brown, director of undergraduate studies for the Math Department in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences; Frederick Davidson, professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Whiting School of Engineering; Janet DiPietro, professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Population, Family

and Reproductive Health; Deborah Gross, the Leonard and Helen Stulman Professor of Mental Health and Psychiatric Nursing in the School of Nursing; Elliott Haut, associate professor of surgery, anesthesiology and critical care medicine in the School of Medicine; John Latting, dean of undergraduate admissions; Christine Newman, associate dean for engineering education outreach in the Whiting School; Laura Overdeck, CTY board member; Charles Rowins, deputy to the CTY executive director; Lee Stephens, parent of a CTY student; and Carolee Stewart, dean of the Peabody Preparatory.

Recruitment will continue until the position is filled.

For more information on the position, go to cty.jhu.edu/directorsearch. Nominations, expressions of interest and applications (including a cover letter and resume) should be submitted to jhu-cty@wittkieffer.com.

Youth exposure to alcohol TV ads growing fast, mostly on cable Study finds that number of ads has more than tripled over eight years

By Tim Parsons

Bloomberg School of Public Health

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outh exposure to alcohol advertising on U.S. television increased 71 percent between 2001 and 2009, according to a report released in December by the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Despite efforts by alcohol companies to strengthen their self-regulatory standards, the average number of ads seen by youth watching television increased from 217 in 2001 to 366 in 2009, or one alcohol ad per day.

“One a day is great for vitamins but not for young people being exposed to alcohol advertising,” said David H. Jernigan, director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth, or CAMY. “This is a significant and troubling escalation and shows the ineffectiveness of the industry’s current voluntary standards.”

In 2003, the trade associations representing beer and distilled spirits companies joined the wine industry in committing to place ads only when the underage audience composition is 30 percent or less. Their previous threshold had been 50 percent.

The report, which is available at www .camy.org, shows that the rise of distilled spirits advertising on cable television is driving the increase. Youth exposure to distilled spirits advertising grew by nearly 3,000 percent from 2001 to 2009, primarily on cable.

The majority of youth exposure to alcoholic beverage advertising on cable occurred on programming that youth ages 12 to 20 were more likely to be watching than were adults 21 and above.

Virtual Media Resources, an advertising research firm with more than 25 years of experience, analyzed for CAMY nearly 2.7

million product advertisements placed by alcohol companies between 2001 and 2009.

The industry purchased this advertising at an estimated cost of more than $8 billion.

Other key findings of the report include: • In 2009, while 13 percent of youth exposure came from advertising placed above the industry’s voluntary 30 percent threshold, a total of 44 percent came from advertising that overexposed youth—meaning that youth were more likely to see the ad on a per capita basis than adults—compared to persons of legal purchase age, 21 and above.

• From 2004, the first full calendar year after the industry implemented its 30 percent standard, to 2009, youth exposure to distilled spirits ads on cable television doubled. In that same period, exposure to beer ads on cable TV grew by nearly a third, a faster rate than the exposure of adults ages 21 and above or of young adults ages 21 to 34.

• In 2009, five cable networks were more likely to expose youth per capita to alcohol advertising than adults 21 and above: Comedy Central, BET, E1, FX and Spike.

Two of these—Comedy Central and BET— delivered more exposure to youth than to young adults ages 21 to 34.

• In 2009, 12 brands generated half of youth overexposure: Miller Lite, Coors Light, Captain Morgan Rums, Bud Light, Samuel Adams Boston Lager, Miller Genuine Draft Light Beer, Crown Royal Whiskey, Corona Extra Beer, Disaronno Originale Amaretto, Smirnoff Vodkas, Miller Chill and Labatt Blue Light Beer.

• From 2001 to 2009, youth were 22 times more likely to see an alcohol product ad than an alcohol company–sponsored “responsibility” ad warning against underage drinking or drinking and driving.

Alcohol is the leading drug problem among youth and is responsible for at least 4,600 deaths per year among persons under 21. In 2009, 10.4 million (27.5 percent) of U.S. young people ages 12 to 20 reported drinking in the past month, and 6.9 million (18.1 percent) reported binge drinking (defined as five or more drinks at one sitting, usually within two hours). Numerous long-

State Dept. director of policy planning to speak at SAIS

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nne-Marie Slaughter, director of policy planning for the State Department, will speak at SAIS at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 27.

Slaughter will speak about “Leading Through Civilian Power: The First QDDR.” Her remarks will focus on how the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review provides a blueprint for elevating American “civilian power” to more effectively advance the national interests and to be a better partner to the military.

The QDDR is a sweeping assessment of how

the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development can become more efficient, accountable and effective in a world in which rising powers, growing instability and technological transformation create new threats but also new opportunities.

SAIS will host a live webcast of Slaughter’s talk, accessible at www.sais-jhu.edu.

The event will be held in the Nitze Building’s Kenney Auditorium. NonSAIS affiliates should RSVP to the SAIS International Development Program at developmentroundtable@jhu.edu.

term studies have determined that exposure to alcohol advertising and marketing increases the likelihood that young people will start drinking, or that they will drink more if they are already consuming alcohol.

Since 2003, industrywide voluntary codes of good marketing practice have set a maximum for underage audiences of their advertising at 30 percent under age 21. However, the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine—as well as 20 state attorneys general—have advocated for a 15 percent standard. The alcohol industry trade press has reported that the Federal Trade Commission recently asked the industry to move from 30 percent to 25 percent, and that the industry has refused to do so.

CAMY’s analysis uses the same methodology that the FTC’s Bureau of Economics has used to measure the exposure of children to food advertising.

The Federal Trade Commission and CAMY have developed similar methodologies for measuring exposure to television advertising. In measuring children’s exposure to food advertising on television, the FTC matches occurrence data for individual ad placements with audience data specific to each occurrence and then aggregates audi-

ence data for various demographics to show relative per-capita exposure. This is what CAMY has done to measure youth exposure to alcohol advertising since 2002. The difference is that the FTC sampled four so-called “sweeps” weeks and extrapolated exposure data from these weeks to an entire year. By comparison, CAMY does a “census” of all monitored advertising throughout the year.

“Alcohol companies have stepped up their advertising efforts on television—particularly on cable networks—and the result is an alarming hike in youth exposure,” Jernigan said. “Industry standards need to be tightened to protect youth from alcohol marketing.”

The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth monitors the marketing practices of the alcohol industry to focus attention and action on industry practices that jeopardize the health and safety of America’s youth.

The center was founded in 2002 at Georgetown University with funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The center moved to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2008 and is currently funded by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Brain Science Institute inks deal to develop novel therapeutics B y C h r i s t e n B r o wn

lee

Johns Hopkins Medicine

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he Johns Hopkins Brain Science Institute has entered into an agreement with Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. to advance the development of novel therapeutics for neurological and psychiatric diseases.

Under terms of the agreement, OrthoMcNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals will support translational research at the Brain Science Institute, and OMJPI scientists and BSi researchers will collaborate to identify new therapeutic targets and pathways for psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.

Eventually, those targets and pathways may be the focus of new drug development programs at OMJPI. Under the terms of the agreement, OMJPI will have the option to license assays to newly identified targets from the BSi and, in exchange, OMJPI will share tool compounds with BSi researchers for biological target identification and validation.

“By combining our vast reservoir of knowledge and talent, the Brain Science Institute hopes to start the next generation

of neuropsychiatric pharmaceuticals down the pipeline by combining complementary skills and expertise of academic and pharmaceutical scientists,” said John Griffin, director of the Brain Science Institute, University Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Neurology and professor of neuroscience and pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

“This partnership should speed benchto-bedside development of better treatments for bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and neurodegenerative diseases,” said Jeffrey D. Rothstein, co-director of the Brain Science Institute and director of the BSi NeuroTranslational Program, whose Johns Hopkins faculty scientists already work to identify novel drug targets arising from their work. Rothstein is also a professor of neurology and neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The BSi was founded in 2007 as a multidisciplinary research enterprise fostering rapid translation of neuroscientific discoveries to treatments of brain diseases, in part by partnering with industry and biotechnology.

For more on the Johns Hopkins Brain Science Institute, go to www.brainscienceinstitute.org.

4 THE GAZETTE • January 24, 2011

Clinical trials cited for ignoring previous relevant research Researchers say failure to consider existing evidence is unscientific, unethical

By Stephanie Desmon

Johns Hopkins Medicine

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he vast majority of already published and relevant clinical trials of a given drug, device or procedure are routinely ignored by scientists conducting new research on the same topic, a new Johns Hopkins study suggests.

The authors of the findings, reported in the Jan. 4 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, argue that these omissions potentially skew scientific results, waste taxpayer money on redundant studies and involve patients in unnecessary research.

Conducting an analysis of published studies, the Johns Hopkins team concludes that researchers, on average, cited in their papers less than 21 percent of previously published, relevant studies. For papers with at least five prior publications available for citation, one-quarter cited only one previous trial, while another quarter cited no other previous trials on the topic. Those statistics stayed roughly the same even as the number of papers available for citation increased. Larger studies were no more likely to be cited than smaller ones.

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the existing evidence and what was cited is pretty large and pretty striking,” said Karen Robinson, an assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-author of the research with Steven N. Goodman, a Johns Hopkins epidemiology and biostatistics professor. “It’s like listening to one witness as opposed to the other 12 witnesses in a criminal trial and making a decision without all the evidence. Clinical trials should not be started—and cannot be interpreted—without a full accounting of the existing evidence.”

Robinson and Goodman searched the Web of Science, an Internet archive, for meta-analyses done in 2004 on groups of randomized, controlled trials on such common topics as a cancer treatment or a heart procedure. A meta-analysis is a systematic procedure for statistically combining the results of many different studies on a similar topic to determine the effectiveness of medical interventions.

The researchers ultimately looked at 227 meta-analyses comprising 1,523 separate clinical trials in 19 different fields, including oncology, neurology and pediatrics.

Of 1,101 peer-reviewed publications for which there had been at least five previous relevant papers, 46 percent acknowledged the existence of no more than one previous trial.

“Accurate representation of the prior cumulative evidence is necessary to both ethically justify a trial and to make proper inferences,” they write. Studying prior

research can also lead to study designs that are more likely to fill gaps in the evidence, the team said, noting that although the presence of a citation “does not tell us how information from that trial was used, the absence of a citation almost guarantees that it was not.”

The Johns Hopkins researchers could not say why prior trials failed to be cited or whether noncited trials may have been

Related website Karen Robinson:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/gim/ faculty/robinson.html

taken into account in the trial design and proposal stages, such as grant requests to the National Institutes of Health.

At the very least, Robinson says, researchers often contend that their publications are so “unique” that there are no relevant studies to cite, even though someone else may have included it in a meta-analysis of like research. Others claim that there just isn’t room to cite past relevant research, but Robinson says that one reason for the omissions could be the self-interest of researchers trying to get ahead.

“To get published, journals are looking for novelty, uniqueness,” she said.

Leaving out references to prior similar research can make findings seem more like a breakthrough, she adds. In her publications

study, Robinson found several papers that claimed to be the first even when many trials on the subject preceded them.

There are no barriers to funding, conducting or publishing a clinical trial without proof that prior literature had been adequately searched and evaluated, she says.

But requirements such as those have been instituted by some European funding agencies, the medical journal The Lancet and the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which require that a covered trial not “unjustifiably duplicate existing studies,” Robinson writes.

Robinson says that funders, institutional review boards and journals need to take steps to ensure that prior research is considered. To do otherwise, she says, encourages this “unethical” behavior to continue.

“Trials being done may not be justified because researchers are not looking at, or at least not reporting, what is already known,” she said. “We may be wasting resources when we fund trials for which we already know the answer. And we may be coming to incorrect conclusions about what works in medicine.”

In some cases, patients who volunteer for clinical trials may be getting a placebo for a medication that a previous researcher has already determined works, or may be getting a treatment that another researcher has shown is of no value. In rare instances, patients have suffered severe side effects and even died during studies because researchers were not aware of previous studies documenting a treatment’s dangers.

Nonprofits and the information revolution

By Mimi Bilzor

Institute for Policy Studies

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onprofit organizations across the United States report considerable progress in keeping their organizations on the cutting edge of technological change, but many remain disappointed with their current level of information technology, according to a recent survey conducted by the Johns Hopkins Nonprofit Listening Post Project.

The overwhelming majority of nonprofits (88 percent) report that information technology is integrated into “many” or “all” aspects of their organization. At the same time, many agencies report that budget pressures pose barriers to fully integrating IT into their work. “Our findings dispel the myth that the nonprofit sector is a technological backwater,” said Lester M. Salamon, director of the Listening Post Project.

“The vast majority of our respondents have clearly recognized the importance of IT to their organizations and are making vigorous efforts to integrate it into their operations.”

Virtually all survey respondents indicated that information technologies are “moderately important” or “critical” to some of their basic organizational activities, including not only accounting and finance (98 percent), external communications (98 percent) and fundraising (91 percent) but also program and service delivery (91 percent).

Ninety-seven percent reported having organizational websites, and 84 percent reported that their organization’s computers are networked, allowing for information and file sharing.

The survey showed that responding organizations are well aware of the benefits of information technology use, with a large proportion citing contributions such as increased public presence for their organizations; increased capacity to communicate with clients, customers and patrons; faster service delivery; improved quality of services delivered; more customer-friendly service delivery; more people served; program innovations; and cost savings.

However, the survey also found that most managers of nonprofits believe there is still considerable room for improvement. Less

than half of respondents noted that they are “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their organization’s current level of information technology, and 92 percent think that their organizations should make more use of their existing technologies for program/service delivery.

Furthermore, a significant proportion of nonprofit organizations remains well behind the curve. A third of all responding organizations indicated that they need more computers to meet their needs, and a similar percentage described their use of information technologies for program delivery as “limited.” Nearly one of every five respondents reported that their organization still relies on “basic” technologies, with limitations such as old computers, outdated software and slow Internet connections.

The survey also explored the factors preventing nonprofits from harnessing the full potential of information technologies. In the current economic climate, it is no surprise that a lack of funds topped the list, with 92 percent of respondents ranking this as a “moderate” or “considerable” challenge.

A substantial majority also cited a lack of time, expertise and IT staff.

In contrast, resistance, indifference or lack of knowledge by executives, donors, volunteers, board members, patrons and staff had much less impact, with only 11 percent to 28 percent of respondents identifying any of these factors as “moderate” or “considerable” challenges.

“We are living in a technological age,” said Peter Goldberg, Listening Post Advisory Committee chairman and the president and CEO of the Alliance for Children and Families. “Nonprofit managers recognize this. We need to make sure they have the resources and the wherewithal to act on this recognition.”

The 443 nonprofit organizations responding to this 2009 Listening Post survey included children and family service agencies, elderly housing and service organizations, community and economic development organizations, museums, theaters and orchestras.

The full report is available at www.ccss .jhu.edu/index.php?section=content&view =16&sub=104&tri=94.

January 24, 2011 • THE GAZETTE

5

Genome code cracked for most common pediatric brain cancer

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cientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have deciphered the genetic code for medulloblastoma, the most common pediatric brain cancer and a leading killer of children with cancer.

The genetic “map” is believed to be the first reported of a pediatric cancer genome and was published online in the Dec. 16 issue of Science Express.

Notably, the findings show that children with medulloblastoma have five- to 10-fold fewer cancer-linked alterations in their genomes compared with their adult counterparts, the scientists said.

“These analyses clearly show that genetic changes in pediatric cancers are remarkably different from adult tumors. With fewer alterations, the hope is that it may be easier to use the information to develop new therapies for them,” said Victor Velculescu, associate professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

“We now know what many pieces of the medulloblastoma puzzle are,” added Bert Vogelstein, Clayton Professor of Oncology and co-director of the Ludwig Center at Johns Hopkins. “Now we must figure out how to put the puzzle together and zero in on parts of the puzzle to develop new therapies. This is what scientists will be focused on for the next decade.”

The Johns Hopkins team used automated tools to sequence hundreds of millions of individual chemicals called nucleotides, which pair together in a preprogrammed fashion to build DNA and, in turn, a genome. Combinations of these nucleotide letters form genes, which provide instructions that guide cell activity. Alterations in the nucleotides, called mutations, can create coding errors that transform a normal cell into a cancerous one. The scientists at Johns Hopkins have previously mapped genome sequences for pancreatic, adult brain, breast and colon cancers with similar methods.

For the study, scientists sequenced nearly

all protein-encoding genes in 22 samples of pediatric medulloblastoma and compared these sequences with normal DNA from each patient to identify tumor-specific changes or mutations. Each tumor sample had an average of 11 mutations. There were 225 mutations in all.

Then, the investigators searched through a second set of 66 medulloblastomas, including some samples from adults, to find how these mutations altered the proteins made by the genes. The team found that most of the mutations congregate within a few gene families or pathways. The most prevalent pathway ordered the way long strands of DNA that make up chromosomes are twisted and shaped into dense packets that open and close depending on when genes need to be activated. Such a process is regulated by chemicals that operate outside of genes, termed “epigenetic” by scientists.

Within the epigenetic pathway, two commonly mutated genes were involved in how molecules called histones wrap around DNA. “These epigenetic changes may be more important than we thought in childhood cancers,” said Will Parsons, formerly of Johns Hopkins and now an assistant professor at Texas Children’s Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine.

Mutations in MLL2 and MLL3 were identified in 16 percent of the entire set of 88 medulloblastoma samples. Add to this three other epigenetic alterations found by the scientists in the genome scan, and the total set accounts for 20 percent of mutations in all the brain cancer samples.

Second to epigenetic pathways were gene mutations in pathways such as Hedgehog and Wnt that control tissue and organ development in humans and other animals.

Both pathways have previously been linked to childhood medulloblastoma.

Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in children in the United States, and more children die of brain tumors than

Nurse educator/researcher to speak on end-of-life care

P

atricia Davidson, a research leader in chronic cardiovascular disease and palliative care, will speak at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 26.

Davidson will present a talk titled “Integrating Policy, Practice and Research to Improve End-of-Life Care” based on her work as the director of the Centre for Cardiovascular and Chronic Care, a collaborative venture of the University of Technology, Curtin University and St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, Australia.

“Dr. Davidson is a global leader in research on the management of chronic illness and care. Her work has made an impact on both care-delivery models and the advancement of health policy at the national level in Australia,” said Marie Nolan, chair of the Department of Acute

and Chronic Care in the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.

Davidson’s clinical and research interests focus on chronic cardiovascular disease, heart failure and palliative care, and indigenous health. In addition to her role as director of the Centre for Cardiovascular and Chronic Care, she serves as president of the International Council on Women’s Health Issues and secretary of the International Network for Doctoral Education in Nursing. She is a member of the Cardiovascular Nurses Working Group of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand and president of the Australasian Cardiovascular Nurses College. She is also a fellow of the Royal College of Nursing Australia and co-chair of the New South Wales Health Clinical Expert Reference Group for Cardiovascular Disease.

any other type of cancer. Medulloblastoma is the most common malignant brain tumor in children, occurring in about 400 children per year in the United States.

“It’s a particular challenge to treat children with brain cancer,” said Parsons, “because our most-effective treatments, surgery and radiation therapy, can cause significant side effects, including cognitive disabilities and hormone abnormalities. For our youngest patients, the effects can be potentially devastating.”

Yet Parsons is encouraged by the study’s findings. “As oncologists, we’re working to understand how specific genetic changes found in patients’ cancers should guide their treatment. Any information that allows us to understand a patient’s prognosis or provides clues about therapies that might work best in a patient is crucial and will help us provide better care.”

The study was funded primarily through the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Genome Characterization Initiative, as well as the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Fund for Cancer Research, Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, American Brain Tumor Association, Brain Tumor Research Fund at Johns Hopkins, Hoglund Foundation, Ready or Not Foundation, Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation, Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation Institute, an AACR Stand Up To Cancer–Dream Team Translational Cancer Research Grant,

Johns Hopkins Sommer Scholars Program, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and Department of Defense.

Parsons is a Graham Cancer Research Scholar at the Texas Children’s Cancer Center.

Additional Johns Hopkins scientists involved in the study are Meng Li, Xiaosong Zhang, Sian Jones, Rebecca J. Leary, Jimmy Cheng-Ho Lin, Simina M. Boca, Hannah Carter, Josue Samayoa, Chetan Bettegowda, Gary L. Gallia, George I. Jallo, Zev A. Binder, Peter C. Burger, Gregory J. Riggins, Rachel Karchin, Nick Papadopoulos and Kenneth W. Kinzler.

Under licensing agreements between The Johns Hopkins University and Beckman Coulter, Vogelstein, Kinzler and Velculescu are entitled to a share of royalties received by the university on sales of products related to research described in this paper. Papadopoulos, Vogelstein, Kinzler and Velculescu are co-founders of Inostics and Personal Genome Diagnostics and are members of their scientific advisory boards. Papadopoulos, Vogelstein, Kinzler and Velculescu own Inostics and Personal Genome Diagnostics stock, which is subject to certain restrictions under university policy. The terms of these arrangements are managed by The Johns Hopkins University in accordance with its conflict-of-interest policies.

—Vanessa Wasta

CACI publishes paper on U.S. economic strategy for Afghanistan

By Felisa Neuringer Klubes

SAIS

T

he Central Asia–Caucasus Institute at SAIS has published a new paper about an economic strategy for Afghanistan.

“Afghanistan Beyond the Fog of National Building,” written by CACI chairman S. Frederick Starr, addresses the question of the United States’ urgently needed—but to now missing—economic strategy for Afghanistan. Starr proposes a strategy based on the opening of transport corridors within Afghanistan, between Afghanistan and its neighbors, and across Afghanistan from Europe, India and Southeast Asia. Calling on evidence from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and other sources, the paper argues that such a strategy would benefit ordinary Afghans, produce a critically needed income stream for the government, reinforce the military effort and provide a fruitful alternative to opium production.

Such a “New Silk Road” strategy has been endorsed by key U.S. military leaders and has increasingly garnered support from other agencies of the U.S. government. It also has the strong support of international financial institutions as well as the Afghan government itself (which refers to this strategic doctrine as the “New Silk Road Initiative”).

The paper concludes with the recommendation that the U.S. administration officially adopt this proposed strategy and establish the necessary interagency means for its systematic implementation.

Starr writes that this process should be carried out in close consort with NATO partners and other donor countries and institutions, as well as with other countries in the region.

A pdf of the paper can be found at www.silkroadstudies.org/new/docs/ silkroadpapers/1101Afghanistan-Starr .pdf.

This paper is an installment of the Silk Road Paper Series, published jointly by the CACI and the Silk Road Studies Program in Stockholm.

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E-mail: elkridgeestates@rocksco.com Office Hours: M-F: 8:30-5:00pm, Sat: 10:00-4:00pm A MMHA Gold Star Award Winning Community and Service Team

6 THE GAZETTE • January 24, 2011

APL ‘weatherman’ mines data for use by Lab and others

By Kristi Marren

Applied Physics Laboratory

KRISTI MARREN / APL

R

ich Giannola’s weather interest is more than a backyard hobby. An atmospheric scientist in the Global Engagement Department at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, he not only operates a manual weather station at home but has also maintained APL’s automated weather station and related website since both were established in 1996.

The APL station, located north of Building 47, collects and archives temperature, wind speed and direction, relative humidity, barometric pressure and rainfall tallies in 15-minute intervals. On Nov. 12, 2010, it collected and stored its half-millionth observation. The data not only provide employees with local temperature and weather conditions but support a range of APL projects, from corroborating effects on electronic equipment used during outdoor experiments to providing engineers with relative solar intensity data that can be correlated with power measurements from solar collectors.

Jim Loesch, supervisor of the Technical Services Department’s Project Management Section, says that weather data, predictions, seasonal norms and trends are crucial information for Laboratory projects.

“In the construction business, weather data help us manage risks to project schedules and costs, and ensure that temperaturesensitive activities, like paving or applying fireproofing to steel structures, are done when the environmental conditions are appropriate,” he says. Additionally, snowfall data—manually collected by Giannola—helps TSD staff characterize snow density, and figure out how much of the white stuff a roof can hold.

rooms to help students learn about math and science. Local TV stations, including WMAR-TV2 in Baltimore and WJLATV7 in Washington, rely on the network for their observation reports and forecasts.

Through a WeatherBug/National Wea­ ther Service partnership, APL’s data could help the Department of Homeland Security and local emergency officials in the event of a terrorism strike or major disaster. Realtime information, such as wind speed and direction and surface temperatures, can help officials know more about the movement of airborne hazards, such as smoke or dangerous chemicals, and make more informed decisions that could save lives.

Giannola continues to answer all nonwork-related inquiries on his own time, even as they’ve grown more frequent and unique. “I do what I can to help. I think that’s part of being a professional in this business,” he says. “Often people don’t

APL weather station records

Rich Giannola stands at the base of APL’s automated weather station.

APL’s weather website (www.jhuapl.edu/ weather/main) has a wealth of local, national and international weather resources, including local forecasts for dozens of popular APL travel destinations across the country.

Once a month Giannola sends data from his personal and APL weather stations to two regional climate groups—the Atlantic Coast Observer Network and the Washington-Baltimore Climate Review— that feed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s public meteorology library.

APL’s station is part of WeatherBug, a national network of more than 8,000 weather stations at schools and businesses that integrates weather data into class-

know where to find data, which might be obvious only to people in the industry.”

He has received requests from as far away as Nova Scotia (for data supporting Canadian military operations). Closer to home, he’s provided rainfall readings for a wetlands project related to the region’s Intercounty Connector; barometric pressure, temperature and rainfall data for a landfill gas-monitoring program at Fort Meade; barometric pressure data to correlate its effect on illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease; and, for a staff member’s school project, data regarding the effects of wind speed on a bicyclist riding on a particular course.

“I’ve been using the data since the station was established,” Loesch says. “Having someone like Rich, who really knows his stuff, is an invaluable resource.”

This article appeared previously in The APL News.

Highest temperature

101 degrees F

July 31, 1999

Lowest temperature 2 degrees F

Jan. 10, 2004 and Jan. 17, 2009

Wettest day

6.38 inches

June 25, 2006

Greatest snowfall

33 inches

Feb. 5-6, 2010

Peak wind gust

57 mph

Nov. 17, 2010

Highest monthly precipitation

13.52 inches

September 1999

Lowest monthly precipitation

0.09 inches

March 2006

Highest monthly snowfall

51.5 inches

February 2010

January 24, 2011 • THE GAZETTE

7

Online tool can help seniors determine risk for dementia Assessment not designed to diagnose but could aid in early intervention

By Stephanie Desmon

Johns Hopkins Medicine

A

quick online assessment tool developed by Johns Hopkins researchers can help worried seniors find out if they are at risk of developing dementia and determine whether they should seek a comprehensive, face-to-face diagnosis from a physician, according to a new study.

The tool, which is being refined and validated, is not meant to replace a full evaluation from a doctor that includes a physical exam, blood work, imaging studies and more. Instead, this assessment provides a scientific way to help a person educate himself about a disease that doctors now believe is best managed if caught early.

“As the population ages and dementia becomes more prevalent, it’s important to get people diagnosed early,” said Jason Brandt, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the leader of the study appearing online in the journal

Alzheimer’s & Dementia. “Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia don’t just creep up on you. They’re incubating for decades in the brain. This tool is potentially very useful in determining who is at risk.”

Among the questions asked on the Dementia Risk Assessment are whether a person has a history of high blood pressure, depression, diabetes, high cholesterol or head injury, all of which are considered welldocumented risk factors for dementia. The assessment also includes a simple memory test that could point to a subtle cognitive decline, Brandt says.

The study analyzed responses from 357 people over the age of 50 who took the assessment at www.alzcast.org. Those who scored lowest on the memory test were significantly older and were more likely to be men, have hypertension and report severe memory problems. And while only 9 percent of respondents reported they had severe memory problems, more than one-third said they had a first-degree relative with dementia or severe memory loss—a major risk factor for the condition.

The assessment takes just five to 10 minutes to complete online, and the questions have been borrowed from other scientifically valid assessments.

Brandt says the assessment may be help-

ful in weeding out those who have signs of dementia from those who are simply experiencing the memory loss that comes with aging or a busy lifestyle. Not being able to find your keys or remembering where you parked is rarely a failsafe sign that a person is suffering from dementia.

“Our goal is really to educate people about what some of the risk factors are and, often, to put people’s minds at ease,” he said. “We somehow expect our memories to be as good at 50 as they were at 30. We can’t run as fast as we could 20 years ago. Why should our memory be as good?”

Alzheimer’s disease still has no cure, but early interventions are being used to slow cognitive decline, Brandt says. Brandt says he hopes this assessment will get patients with several risk factors or symptoms to consult a physician.

Some forms of dementia, he says, may not be permanent, and getting to a doctor could help to restore brain function.

Sometimes, Brandt says, seniors are afraid to mention that they are having memory or other cognitive issues. The new tool, he says, lets them learn more about themselves and their individualized risk factors in the privacy of their homes.

The aging population means that many more people will be diagnosed with dementia in the coming decades.

“Screening procedures that have demonstrated validity and predictive value and are noninvasive, brief and do not require any special expertise to administer may have the greatest potential to be accepted and actually used by the greatest number of people,” Brandt said. “This tool, which this study preliminarily validates, is the first step toward developing such a procedure.”

Brandt and colleagues are currently conducting research that compares a patient’s results from the online Dementia Risk Assessment with an in-person, comprehensive evaluation by a physician at one of two Johns Hopkins clinics.

This research was supported by a grant from the Geoffrey Beene Foundation’s GB Gives Back Alzheimer’s Initiative. Mark Rogerson, of Johns Hopkins, also worked on this study.

Related websites Jason Brandt:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ psychiatry/expert_team/faculty/B/ Brandt.html

Alzcast.org home page:

www.alzcast.org

Discovery: There’s a new ‘officer’ in the infection-control army

By Vanessa McMains

Johns Hopkins Medicine

J

ohns Hopkins scientists have identified a previously unrecognized step in the activation of infection-fighting white blood cells, the main immunity troops in the body’s war on bacteria, viruses and foreign proteins.

“It’s as if we knew many of the generals, colonels and majors, and now we have discovered a new officer that helps the troops carry out the right battle plan,” said Joel Pomerantz, an assistant professor of biological chemistry in the Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences and a member of the Institute for Cell Engineering at Johns Hopkins.

The discovery, published in Molecular Cell on Dec. 10, presents new opportunities to develop drugs to enhance the immune system, or to slow down hyperactive immune cells in cases of autoimmunity and cancer, Pomerantz said.

Faced with infection, the body’s white

blood cells are commanded by a protein called CARD11 either to make more antibodies and white blood cells that attack the invader or to stand down and abort the mission.

The new research shows that CARD11 is under the control of GAKIN, another protein that supervises the directives given to each white blood cell. Because of CARD11’s importance in the decision-making process, it needs a regulator to make sure it turns off when it’s no longer needed, to avoid the risk of hyperactivity. If too many T or B cells, particular types of white blood cells, are made or sent to battle infection, the consequences can be cancer or autoimmune disease, Pomerantz said.

The discovery of GAKIN’s role in immune cell activation began when researchers attached the gene that codes for luciferase—a natural protein that makes fireflies glow—to a gene that CARD11 turns on in response to an infection. This allowed them to see when a CARD11-responsive gene was turned on, by measuring the amount of light released from

the cells. Pomerantz’s group discovered that the more GAKIN protein they added to the cells, the less the cells glowed, meaning that GAKIN represses activation of these genes.

In other experiments, the researchers learned that GAKIN has multiple ways of controlling CARD11 output. CARD11 can turn on only if all the other specific key regulatory proteins—like a tactical team— are present. When researchers labeled the CARD11 protein with a red-colored tag and watched it under a microscope inside a white blood cell, they could see that CARD11 moved away from its tactical team activators to a different location in the cell shortly after the cell was alerted of an infection. But CARD11 hung out longer with the tactical team activators in cells that had less GAKIN. According to Pomerantz, GAKIN can control CARD11 by moving it to another location in the cell away from the proteins that are needed to turn on CARD11.

This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the

American Cancer Society and by funds from Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Cell Engineering, a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award, a Kimmel Scholar Award and a Rita Allen Foundation Scholar Award.

Additional authors of the study are Rebecca Lamason and Abraham Kupfer, both of Johns Hopkins.

Related websites Joel Pomerantz:

biolchem.bs.jhmi.edu/pages/ facultydetail.aspx?AspXPage=g_ A13E315C00C04DFD949FD3E57 BA45181:ID%3D140

biolchem.bs.jhmi.edu/pages/index .html

Biological Chemistry at Johns Hopkins:

PBS head Paula Kerger to speak at Leaders + Legends

By Andrew Blumberg

Carey Business School

P

aula A. Kerger, president and chief executive officer of PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service, is the featured speaker at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School’s Leaders + Legends lecture series on Tuesday, Jan. 25. The event takes place from 7:30 to 9 a.m. at the Legg Mason Tower in Harbor East.

Her talk is titled “The Future of Public Broadcasting.”

PBS is the nation’s largest noncommercial media organization, with more than 350 member stations throughout the country.

Since her arrival in 2006, Kerger’s commitments to the arts, news and public affairs, high-quality content for children’s education, diversity and the use of new technology to bring public service media into the lives of all Americans have resulted in a broad range of initiatives and national acclaim.

Among the accomplishments during her tenure are Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan’s 2009 12-hour documentary, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, and the debut of

Paula Kerger

such acclaimed children’s programs as The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! Dinosaur Train, Curious George (the No. 1 show for children ages 2 to 5 since 2006), Super Why! and Sid the Science Kid. Other initia-

tives include a new primetime science and arts series and two comprehensive online sites: PBS Parents, for parents and caregivers, and PBS Teachers, for educators.

In 2010, PBS programs were honored with 30 Emmys, including 15 Daytime Emmys, more than any other broadcast or cable network; six Peabody awards; three Writers Guild of America awards; three Golden Globe nominations; two Academy Award nominations; 21 Parents’ Choice Awards; and 10 Kidscreen Awards.

In addition to leading PBS, Kerger is president of the PBS Foundation, an independent organization that raises private-sector funding for PBS. For the past four years, The Hollywood Reporter has included Kerger in the “Women in Entertainment Power 100,” an annual survey of the nation’s top women executives in media. In 2005, she was named to the Women’s Forum, an organization of 300 leading women in New York’s arts and business scenes. In 2008, she received the Woman of Achievement Award from Women in Development, New York.

Before joining PBS, Kerger served for more than a decade at Educational Broad-

casting Corp., the parent company of Thirteen/WNET and WLIW New York, where her ultimate position was executive vice president and chief operating officer. Her tenure boasts many achievements, including WNET’s completion in 1997 of the largest successful endowment campaign ever undertaken by a public television station.

Kerger is a director of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and serves on the board of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Baltimore, where she serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council of the university’s Merrick School of Business.

The Leaders + Legends monthly breakfast series, which features today’s most influential business and public policy leaders addressing topics of global interest and importance, is designed to engage business and community professionals in an examination of the most compelling issues and challenges facing society today.

Admission to the lecture, which in­­ cludes breakfast, is $35. To register and for more information, go to carey.jhu.edu/ leadersandlegends.

8 THE GAZETTE • January 24, 2011

Libraries Continued from page 1 and the Hutzler Undergraduate Reading Room in Homewood’s Gilman Hall. In July 2012, a new facility—the 42,000-squarefoot Brody Learning Commons, which is intended for technology-driven and collaborative learning—will open next to the Milton S. Eisenhower Library.

As dean of university museums, Tabb oversees Homewood Museum and Evergreen Museum & Library, both of which are open to the public for tours, exhibitions, concerts and other events. The two museums are also increasingly involved in the academic life of the university.

In July 2006, Tabb was appointed to a two-year term as vice provost for the arts.

In that position, he chaired the Homewood Arts Task Force and coordinated efforts to extend its work across the university. Tabb also was charged with developing a strategy for funding arts initiatives and with building relationships with arts organizations in the greater Baltimore community.

Before coming to Johns Hopkins, Tabb was with the Library of Congress for 30 years in a variety of roles. As associate librarian, he managed 53 of the Library of Congress’ divisions and offices.

A native of Tulsa, Okla., Tabb graduated from the Oklahoma Baptist University and went to Harvard University as a Woodrow Wilson fellow, earning a master’s degree before serving in the U.S. Army as an instructor of English in Thailand.

The Gazette recently sat down with Tabb to discuss the future of a university library system in an electronic information world.

A: Yes. Over the past 10 years or so, the

major publishers started consolidating, and when they did that, it enabled them to be more monopolistic about their products and raise their prices. They have been going up 7, 8, 9 percent per year, some journals even more than that. If we had not banded together to buy as one, we really would be way behind the curve.

Two years ago was when we first spent more money on electronic media than print.

Everyone knew that is what would happen at some point, but the tipping point came two years ago.

Q: So much research can now be done remotely: in the office, dorm room, even on a bench with an iPad. Given that, how do you view the future role of the physical university library space?

A: I have lots of good help; that is the main thing. I bring a lot of energy to the job, and I like doing new things. There’s always something new to do.

There are also more things in common in terms of libraries and museums than people might think. I don’t see them as two different things, but two parts of one whole. That is the way I approach it. I’ve wanted to get our museums more integrated into the academic mission of the university. The library has always had that.

A: It’s a very interesting question, and I’ll have to give several different answers.

At the same time that we’re expanding the MSEL with the Brody Learning Commons, the Welch Medical Library is looking to get rid of its main library altogether. APL has already done that, a couple of years ago. In a sense, the Welch Library already works as more of a virtual library, with staff ready to go out to where the faculty, researchers and clinicians are because now nearly everything these people use is online. Same is true at APL. But we have totally the opposite situation here at the Homewood campus. The Eisenhower Library is getting to be more and more used in person, which is why we needed the Brody Learning Commons.

Undergraduates love to be in the library working, even though probably 90 percent of what they are using would be accessible in the dorm room. What is not in the dorm room is quiet, or the ability to be “seen to be studying.” That matters a lot to Johns Hopkins students. They tell us this. Then there’s also been an increase in the need for group study and group projects.

This in-person use really accelerated dramatically when the Charles Commons residence building was built across the street.

Since it opened [in fall 2006], we’ve seen an exponential growth in library use at Homewood. We had over a million gate count last year, which is a lot of visitors.

When you see what Johns Hopkins Medicine and APL are doing, it’s because of what their users need to have, same as us building a new 42,000-square-foot space because that is what users here on Homewood need. Peabody is still very paper-based because people there still use and need music scores.

Q: The library system is much more than the Milton S. Eisenhower Library that we’re sitting in today. How much involvement do you have with the facilities at other campuses?

Q: In reference to the need for quiet study space, I noticed that when Gilman Hall reopened, the dust hadn’t even settled when students crowded back into the Hutzler Reading Room.

A: Quite a lot. We have an organization called the University Libraries Council, which I chair, and it comprises the five heads of the library systems within Johns Hopkins: the Sheridan Libraries, the Welch Medical Library, Peabody’s Friedheim Library, APL’s library and SAIS’ libraries, not only in Washington but in Bologna and Nanjing. The five of us meet four times a year. We do a lot of things together, and it’s working really well.

One of the first things we did was create one library automation system so that anyone who goes online to see what books are in the libraries at Johns Hopkins now can find all the books in one place. When I arrived here, there were three different systems.

The second step, and probably the single most important thing we’ve done, was to start buying all our electronic resources as one university. Before, we had three entities bargaining for prices to satisfy their customer bases.

Now, we do all of this by having one person buy for everyone. The publishers have agreed to treat Johns Hopkins as one entity. We have saved quite a lot of money this way and really foreshadowed the push to one university that President Daniels has championed.

One ID card can now also be used at all university libraries to make it easier for faculty and students.

A: I know. It’s shocking [laughs]. We didn’t even announce that the Hut had reopened, or what the hours would be, but they filed back in there. They are just voracious, which, in a way, is fantastic.

That is why we know that with the Brody Learning Commons we can plan and prepare all we want, but when the space opens in July 2012, students will make use of that building in ways that we can’t even imagine.

We can try to get ready for it, and be as flexible with the space as possible, but they will get in there and start owning that space.

Q: You’ve added some hats since you arrived here, and one can say you now oversee a vast information empire. How do you make it all work?

Q: You mention electronic resources.

Has the rising cost of acquisitions in this area been a particular challenge?

Q: How much has changed in terms of how students, faculty and staff access online the information we have?

A: One of the biggest challenges is to let people, particularly undergraduates, learn when to use search engines like Google and when not to. These students grew up with these search engines, and too often they assume that whatever you find there is all you need and all you can get. They just take the top hits. So we spend a lot of our time trying to train students when they should be using the databases we have.

We have a redesigned website, but we’ve found that it’s our blogs and Twitter and Facebook accounts that the students actually use more. Almost all the librarians have their own Facebook pages, and that is typically the way students will come at

them. Two years from now there might be something completely different.

Although students love to come to the library and work here in groups, they are more likely to reach out to a librarian online. Take last year, when we had all those snow days. Even though we weren’t fully functioning for a few days here, the librarians were online helping students with their work and answering questions.

Q: With so much available electronically, how are we handling the longterm storage/archival aspect of all this information?

A: Actually, it’s a huge concern. Going back to what we were talking about before, we own less and less, and lease more and more.

We license this information and do so for one-to-three-year periods. Technically, you could argue that you don’t have access if we stop subscribing, but we rarely stop subscribing.

What we have done as a publishing and library system within the last couple of years is help develop several trusted third-party entities. One is called Portico, a nonprofit that the university and JHU Press joined together. Anything that we license from a publisher gets placed in this dark archive so that if something happened, like the publishers went out of business, we would maintain access to what we had previously purchased or had access to.

It seems to be working fine. But it makes everyone at least a little nervous because it’s not something we can physically touch, like the archives we have in Laurel, Md. One of the new slogans among large university library systems like ours is that collaboration is the new competitive edge.

Someone might take the lead in one area and then share it with the rest. We take the lead in one area, like data curation, and then share it with others—and vice versa.

Q: You chaired the Homewood Arts Task Force in 2006. What came of that effort?

A: We had quite a few recommendations.

One of the most important was to have more synchronicity among calendars at Homewood and Peabody, such as the move to a more Monday-Wednesday-Friday class schedule.

Another important one was the creation of the Arts Innovation Program grants, and that continues to this day. One of the major findings of the task force report is that the undergraduates really wanted more for-credit courses in the making of art than were available. So we came up with this idea of Arts Innovation grants. They are relatively small, $8,000 for faculty to create new courses and $2,000 for students to take their arts into the Baltimore community. We gave extra weight to proposals for courses that involved multiple divisions or entities.

We have had grants for courses here at JHU and MICA, for example.

These grants have been very successful and laid the foundation for the work of a new arts task force that [Krieger School] Dean [Katherine] Newman asked me to co-chair.

Q: Tell me about the new task force and what your goals are.

A: I’m co-chairing it with [Peabody Director] Jeff Sharkey. We have met a few times and have six to eight faculty from Homewood and Peabody working with us.

We are trying to think of how we might build upon some of the courses that came out of the Arts Innovation grants and how we can learn from that, and how we might collaborate much more effectively with MICA. We can also make more specific recommendations like how we could make the Writing Seminars, theater program and dance program here even more vibrant than they already are. We are asking ourselves whether and how we might strengthen the university if we made the arts more integral to the academic programs of the university.

Q: It will be interesting to see how the Johns Hopkins community embraces this—if more arts is what they want at a school known for science and medicine.

A: Yes. But Jeff Sharkey always reminds

people at all of our meetings that we are not called the Johns Hopkins Institute of Technology [laughs]; it’s Johns Hopkins University. I’m happy he keeps making that point.

Q: Getting back to the physical library spaces, do you see much more change throughout the university system?

A: I think we’re done with major changes for now, apart from the Brody Learning Commons. We will also be reclaiming some space. One thing I’m really excited about is getting rid of as many print government publications as we can because they take up huge amounts of space. Many of them are serials that keep growing. They are all online now. I’m hoping to reclaim some space at the MSEL now occupied by such collections for group study areas.

I think that when Welch moves to more distributed functions, that will probably be the end of the major physical changes, at least as far as I can see right now. But a lot of repurposing of space will certainly be going on.

Q: Can you talk about the university’s interest in museums and why we’re involved with cultural institutions like Homewood Museum and Evergreen Museum & Library?

A: It’s a good question. Both museums were given to us. For a long time, I think the prevailing thought was that supporting the museums was Johns Hopkins’ gift to the community. For example, at Evergreen there is an Evergreen House Foundation, and [former owner Alice Warder] Garrett left money to that foundation, which supports roughly half the operating costs, but the rest of the operating costs come from the university.

Similarly, Homewood is partially supported by the Merrick endowment.

This community focus was fine, but I also thought that in good conscience we also had to focus on using the museums for Hopkins’ teaching and education mission. Staff in both museums could see that this not only made sense for the future, but they were really excited about it.

We were able to get, very quickly, a very substantial gift from a former Johns Hopkins trustee to endow the course that is now being taught at Homewood Museum each fall. That is really fantastic. The Homewood Museum curator, Catherine Arthur, is teaching this course on material culture as part of the Krieger School’s Museums and Society program: How do you tell historical stories using artifacts? Undergraduates in that course will do an exhibition next month. The same thing is happening at Evergreen, with a few courses there coming through Arts Innovation grants.

But all this doesn’t diminish what we do for the community. We still do exhibitions and welcome people in for tours. But our priority is working with students and getting them to understand what museums are all about.

Q: What is the library system’s role in the community? How do we serve those outside Johns Hopkins?

A: The MSEL is open to everyone. We have a long, strong tradition that anyone who comes in with a photo ID is permitted to use the library. They can’t take books out, but once they come in the door, they have access to our books and thousands of journals and newspapers.

Unfortunately, because of lack of space, we’ve had to reduce that accessibility during exam times, but hopefully with the reopening of the Hut and when the Brody Learning Commons comes online, we won’t have to do that.

We are also actively involved with the public school initiative that President Daniels and Andres Alonso, CEO of the Baltimore City Public School System, started. Everyone at Johns Hopkins has the opportunity to take a few days to spend in the schools. I left it to our library staff to decide whether they wanted to devise some group projects or leave it at the individual level. Our staff chose the Barclay Elementary/Middle School over in the Waverly neighborhood to be our project.

Continued on page 10

January 24, 2011 • THE GAZETTE

9

Shipping transplant kidneys is safe, Hopkins research finds

By Stephanie Desmon

Johns Hopkins Medicine

K

idney transplants using organs from live donors work just as well if the kidneys are shipped—be it across town or across the country—as when the donors and recipients are operated on at the same hospital, new Johns Hopkins research suggests.

The findings, published online in the American Journal of Transplantation, bolster the growing practice of kidney paired donations, which allow incompatible donors to give a kidney on a loved one’s behalf and ensure that loved one gets a compatible kidney from someone else, usually a stranger, in return. Johns Hopkins researchers pioneered the practice, which allows more people to get the lifesaving transplants they need.

“We have found that shipping live-donor kidneys is perfectly safe and helps facilitate more transplants for patients in need,” said transplant surgeon Dorry L. Segev, an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “There was no difference in how well the kidneys functioned compared to those transplanted immediately from someone in a nearby operating room in the same hospital.”

In order to enlarge the pool of kidneys available for donation and provide organs

to patients who might have died waiting for them, the first so-called kidney swaps were done about a decade ago. In these exchanges, a donor whose blood or tissue type doesn’t match that of the intended recipient agrees to participate in a swap with another incompatible pair. The friend, relative or altruistic donor still donates—only to a stranger—and that stranger’s loved one donates a kidney in return. By exchanging kidneys between pairs, each sick person involved gets a compatible—and lifesaving—kidney.

Until 2007, hospitals and surgeons required donors and recipients involved in kidney exchanges to have surgery at the same hospital. This was often a hardship.

For donors, it could mean traveling to an unknown hospital and being cared for by an unknown surgeon, away from a support network. It could be costly to fly the donor out of state to participate in the transplant.

And, for many recipients, it would mean being separated from the donor, often a relative or a close friend, at a crucial time.

At the same time, doctors had concerns about shipping kidneys. They worried that extending a kidney’s cold ischemic time— the time the donor organ was kept outside the body—would take away some of the benefits of getting a kidney from a live donor, Segev says.

So Johns Hopkins researchers studied whether the length of time the kidney was

kept viable on ice had any harmful effects on long-term graft survival. Their research found none.

That set the stage for April 27, 2007, when, as part of a paired donation, a kidney from a live donor was shipped from California to The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

“As soon as we showed it could be done,” Segev said, “the practice took off. Nobody wanted to make the donors travel. Now, almost all kidney exchanges between centers occur with the shipping of organs.”

Over the next three years, Segev’s study shows, 56 live-donor kidneys were transported among 30 transplant centers across the United States and Canada. All the grafts survived. The newly transplanted kidneys quickly began making urine and clearing creatinine out of the recipients’ systems, he found.

The kidneys in Segev’s study traveled an average distance of 792 miles, with a range of less than one mile to 2,570 miles. On average, they spent an average of 7.6 hours outside the body, with a range of 2.5 to 14.5 hours. Nearly 13 percent of the organs were transported by motor vehicle and roughly 87 percent by air.

The Johns Hopkins Hospital has participated in more than 100 kidney exchanges.

Johns Hopkins has made these matches possible using a computer program developed

by Segev and his wife, Sommer Gentry, an

applied mathematics professor at the United States Naval Academy. Last fall, the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network launched a national pilot program using the Johns Hopkins software that Segev expects will match many more people with needed kidneys.

“As the national system expands, shipping kidneys will become more and more necessary,” he said. “Kidney exchanges have gone from being something you do at your own center to something done by working together nationwide. And now we know kidneys can be safely transported anywhere.”

Other Johns Hopkins researchers who worked on the study are Jonathan Berger, Janet M. Hiller, R. John Montgomery, Christopher E. Simpkins and Robert A. Montgomery.

Related websites Dorry Segev:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ transplant/About/Segev.html

Paired Kidney Exchange Program:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ transplant/Programs/InKTP/ kidneypaireddonation.html

Nearing interstellar space, Voyager sees solar wind decline

T

he 33-year odyssey of NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached a distant point at the edge of our solar system where there is no outward motion of solar wind.

Now hurtling toward interstellar space some 10.8 billion miles from the sun, Voyager 1 has crossed into an area where the velocity of the hot ionized gas, or plasma, emanating directly outward from the sun has slowed to zero. Scientists suspect the solar wind has been turned sideways by the pressure from the interstellar wind.

The event is a major milestone in Voyager 1’s passage through the heliosheath, the turbulent outer shell of the sun’s sphere of influence, and the spacecraft’s upcoming departure from our solar system.

“The solar wind has turned the corner,” said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology. “Voyager 1 is getting close to interstellar space.”

Our sun gives off a stream of charged particles that form a bubble known as the heliosphere around our solar system. The

solar wind travels at supersonic speed until it crosses a shockwave called the termination shock. At this point, the solar wind dramatically slows down and heats up in the heliosheath.

Launched on Sept. 5, 1977, Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock in December 2004 into the heliosheath. Scientists have used data from Voyager 1’s Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument to deduce the solar wind’s velocity.

When the speed of the charged particles hitting the outward face of Voyager 1 matched the spacecraft’s speed, researchers knew that the net outward speed of the solar wind was zero. This occurred in June, when Voyager 1 was about 10.6 billion miles from the sun.

“When I realized that we were getting solid zeros, I was amazed,” said Rob Decker, a Voyager Low-Energy Charged Particle instrument co-investigator and senior staff scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. “Here was Voyager, a spacecraft that has been a workhorse

for 33 years, showing us something completely new again.”

Because the velocities can fluctuate, scientists watched four more monthly readings before they were convinced the solar wind’s outward speed actually had slowed to zero.

Analysis of the data shows that the velocity of the solar wind has steadily slowed at a rate of about 45,000 mph each year since August 2007, when the solar wind was speeding outward at about 130,000 mph. The outward speed has remained at zero since June.

The results were presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Scientists believe that Voyager 1 has not crossed the heliosheath into interstellar space, which would mean a sudden drop in the density of hot particles and an increase in the density of cold particles. Scientists are putting the data into their models of the heliosphere’s structure and should be able to better estimate when Voyager 1 will reach interstellar space. Researchers currently estimate Voyager 1 will cross that frontier in about four years.

“In science, there is nothing like a reality check to shake things up, and Voyager 1 provided that with hard facts,” said Tom Krimigis, principal investigator on the LowEnergy Charged Particle Instrument, who is based at Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory and the Academy of Athens, Greece. “Once again, we face the predicament of redoing our models.”

A sister spacecraft, Voyager 2, was launched on Aug. 20, 1977, and has reached a position 8.8 billion miles from the sun.

The two spacecraft have been traveling along different trajectories and at different speeds. Voyager 1 is traveling faster, at a speed of about 38,000 mph, compared to Voyager 2’s velocity of 35,000 mph. In the next few years, scientists expect Voyager 2 to encounter the same kind of phenomena as Voyager 1.

The Voyagers were built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which continues to operate both spacecraft.

For more information about the Voyager spacecraft, go to www.nasa.gov/voyager.

Nursing

initial and sustained consultation and collaboration to create a center of excellence in nursing for the region. Specifically, Johns Hopkins will assist in the recruitment of the NewGiza University School of Nursing’s founding dean and faculty, and advise on other aspects of the school’s development, including academics, administrative policies, and procedures and finances. Future consultations could include collaborative academic and research activities such as joint seminars, workshops, publications and instruction.

Also in November, School of Nursing leadership joined other members of Johns Hopkins for the signing in Malaysia of a landmark agreement to develop the country’s first medical school, an institution in Kuala Lumpur with a four-year Western curriculum. Under the agreement, Johns Hopkins will assist with the development of every major aspect of the new venture, including medical and nursing education programs, clinical affairs, and campus design and facilities planning.

As part of these and other agreements, the School of Nursing will send students on study abroad projects and will welcome students from other countries to the school’s campus in Baltimore.

“Having students come here enriches us

and broadens the global exposure for our students who, for whatever reason, can’t participate in our international programs,” Sharps said. “In my new role, I certainly want to foster strong academic partnerships with institutions in Asia, Africa and around the world.”

Sharps said that you don’t have to go to Uganda, however, to practice nursing skills.

The needs are great here in the school’s backyard, she said, and nursing students are eager to assist.

In the current academic year, the number of students gaining hands-on learning experiences in Baltimore City community outreach projects increased by more than 44 percent from the previous year. The number of community outreach sites has also grown significantly, from 40 in 2009 to a new high of 60. These sites include free clinics, school and neighborhood health programs, and community-based organizations.

The school’s Community Outreach Program, which was established in 1991 as the Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Fellows Program, is today open to all undergraduate students for academic credit. Many of the Johns Hopkins nurse-led programs are components of the school’s East Baltimore Community Nursing Centers and include

the Lillian Wald Community Nursing Center for women, infants and children; a health suite in the House of Ruth, Maryland, a domestic-violence shelter; and the Isaiah Wellness Center in Apostolic Towers, a senior citizen residency complex.

“We want to grow and make these services stronger and reach even more people,” Sharps said. “What we love about these projects is that they provide gap services for people, and it gets them into health programs. We are No. 2 in public health nursing education in the nation. That is why students come here, to apply what we are learning in our own community.”

As an expert in maternal and child health nursing, Sharps works at the forefront of community and public health nursing and at the interface of mental and physical health.

In addition to serving as department chair, she is director of three health and wellness centers operated by the school.

For more on the Center for Global Nursing, go to www.son.jhmi.edu/areas_of_ excellence/global/center. For more on the school’s efforts in community and public health, go to www.nursing.jhu.edu/areas_of_ excellence/local. G Jonathan Eichberger of the School of Nursing contributed to this article.

Continued from page 1 academic consulting and advising initiatives, such as those with NewGiza University in Egypt and a recently announced endeavor in Malaysia.

Sharps said that she is honored to lead the school’s bold new initiative to grow its community and global projects. She said that in today’s global environment, Johns Hopkins needs to widen its scope.

“We must prepare our students to work in a variety of settings and be diverse in their experience,” Sharps said. “Many students come here specifically for our community and global programs.”

In terms of global efforts, Sharps said that she would work to expand and enhance the school’s international academic partnerships.

In November, the school announced a memorandum of understanding with NewGiza University to consult with the Egyptian institution on the establishment of the NewGiza University School of Nursing.

The memorandum is the first step toward

10 THE GAZETTE • January 24, 2011 P O S T I N G S

B U L L E T I N

Job Opportunities The Johns Hopkins University does not discriminate on the basis of gender, marital status, pregnancy, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or other legally protected characteristic in any student program or activity administered by the university or with regard to admission or employment.

Homewood

Office of Human Resources: Suite W600, Wyman Bldg., 410-516-8048 JOB# POSITION

45459 45953 45976 46001 46002 46011 46013 46014 46048 46050 46055 46064 46065 46071

Sourcing Specialist Employer Outreach Specialist Associate Dean Librarian III DE Instructor, CTY Research Specialist Sr. Financial Analyst Budget Analyst Admissions Aide Research Program Assistant II Research Technologist DE Instructor, CTY Assistant Program Manager, CTY Volunteer and Community Services Specialist

Schools of Public H e a l t h a n d N u r s i n g Office of Human Resources: 2021 East Monument St., 410-955-3006 JOB# POSITION

43084 43833 44899 44976 44290 44672 41388 44067 44737 44939 44555 44848 44648 44488 43425 43361 44554

Academic Program Coordinator Grant Writer Maintenance Worker Food Service Worker LAN Administrator III Administrative Secretary Program Officer Research Program Assistant II Sr. Administrative Coordinator Student Affairs Officer Instructional Technologist Sr. Financial Analyst Assay Technician Research Technologist Research Nurse Research Scientist Administrative Specialist

School of Medicine

Office of Human Resources: 98 N. Broadway, 3rd floor, 410-955-2990

46078 46085 46088 46090 46093 46097 46106 46108 46111 46127 46133 46152 46164 46166 46171 46179 46213 46215 46216 46267 46274

Student Career Counselor Laboratory Coordinator Annual Giving Officer Campus Police Officer Curriculum Specialist LAN Administrator III Outreach Coordinator Executive Assistant Center Administrator Monitoring and Evaluation Adviser Employee Assistance Clinician HR Manager Sr. Software Engineer Proposal Officer Sr. Staff Engineer Research Program Assistant Custodian Mail Clerk Software Engineer Training Facilitator Academic Program Coordinator

44684 42973 43847 45106 45024 42939 43754 42669 44802 44242 44661 45002 44008

44005 41877 44583 44715 44065 44112 44989 44740 39063 44603

Biostatistician Clinical Outcomes Coordinator Sr. Programmer Analyst Employment Assistant/Receptionist Payroll and HR Services Coordinator Research Data Coordinator Malaria Adviser Data Assistant Budget Specialist Academic Program Administrator Sr. Research Program Coordinator Research Observer Manuscript Editor, American Journal of Epidemiology Research Service Analyst Health Educator Multimedia Production Supervisor Research Program Coordinator Research Data Manager Sr. Laboratory Coordinator Sr. Research Assistant Sr. Administrative Coordinator Research Assistant Budget Analyst

37442 37260 38008 36886 37890

Sr. Administrative Coordinator Sr. Administrative Coordinator Sponsored Project Specialist Program Administrator Sr. Research Program Coordinator

JOB# POSITION

38035 35677 30501 22150 38064

Assistant Administrator Sr. Financial Analyst Nurse Midwife Physician Assistant Administrative Specialist

This is a partial listing of jobs currently available. A complete list with descriptions can be found on the Web at jobs.jhu.edu.

Woodcliffe Manor Apartments

S PA C I O U S

G A R D E N A PA RT M E N T L I V I N G I N

R O L A N D PA R K

• Large airy rooms • Hardwood Floors • Private balcony or terrace • Beautiful garden setting • Private parking available • University Parkway at West 39th St. 2 & 3 bedroom apartments located in a private park setting. Adjacent to Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus and minutes from downtown Baltimore.

410-243-1216

105 West 39th St. • Baltimore, MD 21210 Managed by The Broadview at Roland Park BroadviewApartments.com

Notices Becoming a Baltimore Albert Schweitzer Fellow — An information ses-

sion for graduate students from the schools of Medicine, Public Health and Nursing interested in learning about the Baltimore Schweitzer Fellows Program will be held at noon on Thursday, Jan. 27, in room W2030, Bloomberg School of Public Health. Sch-

Errors Continued from page 1 the watch-spot-analyze approach to their daily rotation in the hospital.

Each day’s rotation ended with students discussing near misses or errors they witnessed and ways to prevent them from happening.

Students also were encouraged to speak up about errors and report them to attending physicians and senior doctors before they reached the patient, as well as log the errors in the hospital’s electronic system that tracks such events. On several occasions, the drills led to the reporting of patient-safety concerns by students and were dealt with promptly. In one instance, a student reviewing a chart noted that the patient’s weight had been entered incorrectly, which would have led to the wrong medication dose.

“Beyond providing firsthand observation, a course like this one may give teaching hospitals an untapped and invaluable resource for spotting and preventing medication and other errors: medical students,” said lead investigator Robert Dudas, a pediatrician at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Allowing medical students to spot mistakes “in the trenches” teaches them how and why medication errors occur and what can be done to prevent them, the Johns Hopkins researchers say. It also fosters an open culture by encouraging them to speak up about and point out mistakes made by others.

“The foundation of patient safety lies in a solid understanding of how and why medication errors happen, combined with a sobering reality check that mistakes do happen,” said co-investigator Marlene Miller, a pediatric patient safety expert at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

Of the 108 students who took the pilot course, 76 percent said that they felt so enlightened by it that it should be made part of the regular curriculum. They also reported three times greater willingness to report such errors to colleagues, teachers and hospital officials responsible for patient safety.

The students’ views on medication errors became more realistic after the course, when 89 percent of them reported a better understanding that in their future practice they will witness colleagues and other hospital staff making errors, compared with 57 percent before taking it. And after completing the course, 79 percent acknowledged that they themselves will likely make mistakes that could harm patients, compared with 64 percent before the course. Being aware of one’s own fallibility is critical in preventing errors, the investigators say.

Also, after the course, more students (94 percent) reported a better understanding that disruptions in the flow of care—such as transferring a patient from one unit to another— are high-risk periods for medication and

Libraries Continued from page 8 A group of 30 have already been there once, and they are going back this month to do some work in the library and whatever else the principal wants.

B O A R D

weitzer Fellows will design and implement an innovative service project that will address an underserved community’s needs.

The one-year projects will be guided by a mentor and funded by a $2,000 stipend.

The program is co-sponsored by SOURCE (Student Outreach Resource Center) and the Baltimore Schweitzer Fellows Program. For more information, go to www .schweitzerfellowship.org/features/us/bal.

Applications must be submitted online by Feb. 13.

other errors, compared with 81 percent before taking the course. More students (75 percent) reported feeling comfortable reporting medication errors to authorities after taking the course than before (50 percent).

The critical importance of teaching patient safety basics during medical school has been well-established, yet few schools make patient safety part of their curriculum, delaying training in this crucial area until young doctors start postgraduate training in a specialty or residency, the Johns Hopkins researchers say.

“Studies have shown that the majority of medication errors involve junior doctors recently graduating from medical school, so we must instill patient-safety tenets early on during medical school and before these young doctors enter the hospital for hands-on training,” Dudas said.

Dudas added that while new patientsafety systems alerting physicians of medication-error risk and periodic safety drills are important, they will make little difference if a physician lacks a basic appreciation for the root causes of many errors.

Research by Johns Hopkins and other institutions indicates that most errors stem from the complexity of the medical system, which involves a multiple-step process of calculating dosages and prescribing, dispensing and giving drugs, with the most common causes of medication errors attributed to misinterpretation of the patient’s weight, mathematical errors of computation, misinterpretation of orders and giving extra doses or missing doses.

Previous research indicates that certain medication errors in children, and adults, can be reduced or prevented by computerizing drug orders with built-in double- and triple-checking mechanisms that reduce the likelihood for miscalculation or misinterpretation, a procedure that Johns Hopkins Children’s Center follows. In 2006, Johns Hopkins researchers demonstrated that Webbased ordering systems make it less likely to order and give a child a wrong dose. However, because computerized orders can prevent only certain types of errors, it is critical to find new ways and design new systems that also reduce other types of errors, such as dispensing and administration errors, while at the same time recognizing the human factor.

Errors are common during every step of the medication process, but they occur most often during the prescribing and administering stages, according to an Institute of Medicine report. When all types of errors are taken into account, a hospital patient can expect to be subjected, on average, to more than one medication error each day, the report states.

Michael Barone, of Johns Hopkins, was senior investigator on the study. David Bundy, also of Johns Hopkins, was co-author. G

Related website ‘BMJ Quality & Safety’:

qualitysafety.bmj.com

Q: Anything else you want to talk about?

A: It’s an exciting time to be a librarian.

You can plan, but you really never know what is going to happen next, so you can never coast on autopilot. I’m especially eager to see what impact the Brody Learning Commons will have on intellectual and community life at Hopkins. G

January 24, 2011 • THE GAZETTE

Classifieds APARTMENTS/HOUSES FOR RENT

Belvedere area, beautifully renov’d 3BR, 2BA TH, available June. $1,600/mo (furn’d) or $1,450/mo (unfurn’d). 410-929-6008 or belvedererental@gmail.com.

Bolton Hill, 2 big BRs and 2.5BAs in immaculate TH, hdwd flrs, recent appliances, AC, new roof/windows, porch, bsmt, 2 prkng spaces, 4-min walk to metro, avail July. $1,850/mo. 410-383-7055 or viLca11@ gmail.com.

Butchers Hill, fully furn’d, cute and cozy house, 1BR + office, hdwd flrs, sec sys, all appls, WiFi, satellite system. jhmirental@ gmail.com.

Canton, stunning 2BR, 2BA RH w/prkng pad, spa BAs, gourmet kitchen, fin’d bsmt, hdwd flrs. $1,800/mo. 725slakewoodave@ gmail.com.

Charles Village, spacious, bright 3BR apt, 3rd flr, newly updated, nr Homewood. $1,350/mo. 443-253-2113 or pulimood@ aol.com.

The Colonnade, 1BR, 1.5BA condo in upscale, full-service bldg (across from Homewood Field), marble flrs, balcony, freshly painted, W/D in unit, CAC, underground prkng, gym, storage locker. $1,200/ mo. 410-925-9330.

Deep Creek Lake/Wisp, cozy 2BR cabin w/full kitchen, call for wkly/wknd rentals, pics avail at jzpics@yahoo.com. 410-6389417.

Fells Point, 1BR waterfront condo in secure bldg, garage prkng. $1,750/mo. 443-6902208.

Hampden, 2BR EOG w/fin’d bsmt, prkng pad, 5 mins to JHU, 10 mins to downtown. $1,150/mo. 410-227-7110.

Harborview (23 Pier Side Drive), 1BR unit, 1st flr has great views of water and swimming pool, 2 health clubs, garage prkng, 24-hr security incl’d, safe area; applicant must have good credit. $1,600/mo. 443471-2000.

Ocean City, Md, 3BR, 2BA condo (137th St), ocean block, steps from beach, offstreet prkng (2 spaces), lg pool, walk to restaurants/entertainment; call for rates.

410-544-2814.

Pikesville/Owings Mills, newer 3BR, 2BA contemporary condo, metro accessibility to JHH, great affluent area, rent-to-own option available. $1,650/mo. 443-743-4429.

Reisterstown, 3BR, 2.5BA TH, lg, spacious rms, new appls, deck, backyd, 10 WYMAN COURT HICKORY HEIGHTS Beech Ave. adj. to JHU!

Studio from $570 1 BD Apt. from $675 2 BD from $785

Hickory Ave. in Hampden, lovely Hilltop setting!

2 BD units from $750, or, with Balcony - $785!

Shown by appointment - 410-764-7776

www.BrooksManagementCompany.com

Greek Orthodox Cathedral

Church Supper

Saturday, January 29, 2011 5pm-8pm $10/Dinner, Children $6

Dine-in or carryout! Free Parking!

Greek-style Meatballs, Spanakopita (Spinach Pie), Oven Roasted Potatoes, String Beans. Beverages & Dessert avail.

FREE SODA with this AD! Corner of Maryland & Preston Streets (410) 727-1831 or (410) 252-4558

11

M A R K E T P L A C E

mins to Owings Mills metro. $1,500/mo. www.21136rent.com (for pics and details).

Roland Park, spacious, furn’d 2BR, 2BA condo in secure area, W/D, walk-in closet, swimming pool, cardio equipment, .5 mi to Homewood. $1,600/mo. 410-218-3547 or khassani@gmail.com.

Beautiful 3BR, 2BA condo w/garage, spacious, great location, walk to Homewood campus. $1,800/mo. 443-848-6392 or sue.rzep2@ verizon.net.

HOUSES FOR SALE

Broadway Overlook, 3BR condo unit, 2 full BAs, contemporary layout, 10-min walk to JHH. $140,000. 443-739-6269 or retzcare@ yahoo.com.

Canton, 2BR, 2.5BA RH w/3 fin’d levels, brick front, hdwd flrs, rooftop deck, Hopkins resident relocating. $298,000. 410-3277424.

Federal Hill, TH w/numerous updates, bamboo hdwd flrs in living and dining rm, updated kitchen and BA. $179,900. 410808-4869 or jodiemack@gmail.com.

Gardens of Guilford, newly renov’d, lg 2BR, 2BA condo in elegant setting, easy walk to Homewood campus. 410-366-1066.

Gardenville, 3BR, 1.5BA RH in quiet neighborhood, new kitchen and BA, CAC, hdwd flrs, club bsmt, fenced, maintenance-free yd w/carport, 15 mins to JHH. $139,500. 443610-0236 or tziporachai@juno.com.

Hampden, updated 3BR duplex in quiet neighborhood, 2 full BAs, spacious eat-in kitchen, dw, master BR has own BA and kitchenette, mud rm and W/D, front and back porches, fenced yd, free street prkng (front and back). $215,000. 410-592-2670.

Mays Chapel, 2BR, 2BA condo on ground flr, w/laundry rm. $174,000. http://3gurteencourt.com.

Mt Washington (5905 Pimlico Rd), 1865 farmhouse on private rd, acre of open and wooded land, 3BRs, orig wide plank flrs, lg updated kitchen, 1,600 sq ft deck; open house Jan 30 (1-3pm) or call for appointment. 443-562-1634.

Lg 1BR condo in luxury high-rise, secure bldg w/doorman, W/D, CAC/heat, swimming pool, exercise rm, nr Guilford/JHU. $179,000. 757-773-7830 or norva04@gmail .com.

ROOMMATES WANTED

Huge BR avail in 2BR, 2nd flr apt in Charles Village (30th St between Guilford and Abell), BR has window bay, hdwd flrs, shared BA, patio, big windows in common spaces, great neighbors, avail March 1. lwsusskind@yahoo.com.

Rm in new TH, walking distance to JHMI, pref nonsmoker/no pets. 301-717-4217 or jiez@jayzhang.com.

Lovely BR, BA and entire floor in Locust Point, pics available. $675/mo + 1/2 utils.

Shannon, 443-677-4889.

Furn’d BR and own BA in 3BR apt in Fells Point, W/D, free Internet access, safe neighborhood, 5-min walk to stores/restaurants/bus stations/park, 15-min walk to SoM; students and postdocs compensated for monthly bus pass. $350/mo to $400/mo + utils. xzhan45@gmail.com.

Accommodation nr JHH. $475/mo incl everything. 951-941-0384 or arcroshani@ hotmail.com.

Lg, bright rm w/full private BA in lg, upscale apt, DISH, high-speed Internet, fullsize W/D in apt, conv to 695/I-83/Charles St. $800/mo incl utils. 443-465-7011 or jdamero@gmail.com.

Share nice 3BR, 2.5BA TH in White Marsh. $550/mo + 1/2 utils. 443-621-4519 or ctillett@gmail.com.

Lg, partly furn’d bsmt BR w/priv BA in beautifully renov’d 3BR Mayfield RH, across from Herring Run Park, mins to Lake Montebello, 10 mins to JHMI, perfect for temporary visiting medical prof’ls. $600/ mo incl utils and wireless. mayfieldroom@ gmail.com.

CARS FOR SALE

’04 Honda Pilot EX, 4WD, seats 8, garagekept, looks and runs great, Md insp’d, 152K mi. $8,495. 410-365-6782. ’05 RV, 27 ft, sleeps 8, used 5 times, awesome fun for the family; call for pics. 443690-4442 or susanb1985@gmail.com. ’01 Nissan Altima GLE, automatic, power windows/locks, rear multi-CD player, automatic sunroof, 4 new tires, in good cond, 205K mi runs very well. $2,750/best offer.

410-804-9703.

ITEMS FOR SALE

Treadmill from Sears, updated features, excel cond. $200. 410-522-7546.

Antique oak fireplace mantle, carved wood parlor chair, spindle leg side table; all cheap and in good cond. 410-889-1213 or judybyen@hotmail.com.

Printer, dresser w/shelves, three-step ladders (2), sandy beach chairs (2), reciprocating saw, digital piano. 410-455-5858 or iricse .its@verizon.net.

Yamaha outdoor 2-way spkrs, black, model# NS-AW1, $50; Thule Set-to-Go kayak saddles (2 pairs, 4 total), can sell separately, $125/both pairs; Thule rooftop ski carrier, holds 2 pairs of skis, great cond, $75; best offers accepted, e-mail for photos. grogan .family@hotmail.com.

HP 94 Inkjet print cartridges (4). $40/all. frandlk@gmail.com.

Pack’n Play w/mobile, music box, 2 quilted covers for bottom, in excel cond. $75.

Chris, 443-326-7717.

Dining rm set, table w/leaf, 4 chairs, china cabinet and sideboard, in excel cond. $225.

410-633-2064.

Mountain bike (adult size) w/pump and padlock, 2 keys. $75. odufor@gmail.com.

Sm Yorkshire terrier, tan and silver, loves attention, house-trained, shots up to date. $300. Wanda, 443-831-2020.

Set of 4 original wheel covers from a 2001 Toyota Camry, in very good cond, fits 15" wheels. $50/best offer. hopkinsbob@yahoo .com.

Conn alto saxophone, best offer; exercise rowing machine, $50; both in excel cond.

410-488-1886.

SERVICES/ITEMS OFFERED OR WANTED

Medical faculty couple looking for FT nanny to care for one infant in Fells Point, starting March or April, refs req’d. 443-759-6105.

Responsible, loving pet-, baby- or housesitter, avail, JHU employee has experience w/special needs children and cats/dogs, refs available. 202-288-1311 or janyelle.marie@ hotmail.com.

Aquatic and box turtles avail for adoption through Mid-Atlantic Turtle & Tortoise Society. matts_adoptions@hotmail.com.

Seeking home for brother/sister cats, 8 yrs old, raised w/dogs. 443-527-0135 or henochryugo@gmail.com.

Free: piano, old Betsy Ross spinet, works but needs tuning and hauling from 2nd flr, no bench. chunkyrice@gmail.com.

Database programmer/volunteer needed for ambitious ecology project. Mark, 410-4649274.

New home wanted for 1.5-yr-old M cat, due to allergies, gray/white, neutered, all shots up-to-date, in good health. mrbungles01@ gmail.com.

Learn Arabic w/native, experienced teacher! MSA and colloquial, all levels, lessons tailored to your needs, individual or group. thaerra@hotmail.com.

Piano/clarinet lessons by current Peabody clarinet master’s student, competitive rates.

240-994-6489 or hughsonjennifer@gmail .com.

Looking for reliable babysitter for occasional wknights/wknds in Towson area, must be nonsmoker, have own transportation, refs req’d. 443-829-8478 or hoprobin@gmail .com.

MHIC-licensed carpenter specializing in decks, flrs, trim work, custom stairs, roofs, framing and/or sheetrock, any carpentry projects. Rick, 443-621-6537.

Private piano lessons by graduate student at Peabody Institute, affordable rates. 425890-1327.

Great photos! Headshots for interviews/ auditions, family pictures, production shots, events. Edward S Davis photography/videography. 443-695-9988 or esdavisimaging@gmail.com.

Licensed landscaper avail for fall/winter leaf or snow removal, other services incl yd cleanup, lawn maintenance, trash hauling.

Taylor Landscaping LLC. 410-812-6090 or romilacapers@comcast.net.

LCSW-C providing psychotherapy for adults and couples w/sexual health or sexuality concerns, EHP accepted. 410-235-9200 #6, or shane.grant.lcswc@gmail.com.

Absolutely flawless detailing. Jason, 410630-3311.

Friday Night Swing Dance Club, open to the general public, no partners necessary. 410663-0010 or www.fridaynightswing.com.

Flea market, Saturday, Feb 19, 9am-1pm, 37th and Roland Ave (in Hampden nr Homewood campus). 410-366-4488 (to reserve tables).

PLACING ADS Classified listings are a free service for current, full-time Hopkins faculty, staff and students only. Ads should adhere to these general guidelines: • One ad per person per week. A new request must be submitted for each issue.

• Ads are limited to 20 words, including phone, fax and e-mail.

• We cannot use Johns Hopkins business phone numbers or

e-mail addresses.

• Submissions will be condensed at the editor’s discretion.

• Deadline is at noon Monday, one week prior to the edition in which the ad is to be run.

• Real estate listings may be offered only by a Hopkins-affiliated seller not by Realtors or Agents.

(Boxed ads in this section are paid advertisements.)

Classified ads may be faxed to 443-287-9920; e-mailed in the body of a message (no attachments) to gazads@jhu.edu; or mailed to Gazette Classifieds, Suite 540, 901 S. Bond St., Baltimore, MD 21231. To purchase a boxed display ad, contact the Gazelle Group at 410-343-3362.

12 THE GAZETTE • January 24, 2011 J A N .

2 4

–

3 1

Calendar C OLLO Q U I A

“U.S.S. Cyclops—Lost Without a Trace,” an Applied Physics Laboratory colloquium with author Marvin Barrash. Kossiakoff Center Auditorium. APL

Fri., Jan. 28, 2 p.m.

Jan.

24,

12:30

Mon., Jan. 24, 2 p.m. “The North Korean Shelling of Yeon­ pyong Island: How Can We Prevent a Second Korean War,” a U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS discussion with Song Young Gil, mayor of Incheon, Korea. To RSVP, e-mail jhill50@jhu.edu or call 202-663-5830. Kenney Auditorium, Nitze Bldg. SAIS Tues.,

Jan.

25,

12:30

“Outreach and Conflict Mediation to Reduce Youth Violence: Lessons From Baltimore’s Safe Streets Program,” a Graduate Seminar in Injury Research and Policy with Jennifer Mendel Whitehill, SPH. Co-sponsored by the Center for Injury Research and Policy, the Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence and the Center for Gun Policy and Research. 250 Hampton House. EB

Tues., Jan. 25, 12:10 p.m.

p.m.

“Haiti Today, Haiti Tomorrow,” a SAIS International Law and Organizations Program panel discussion with Paulo Lyra, Pan American Health Organization; Tamara Kreinin, United Nations Foundation; Amy Coughenour, deputy director, Pan American Development Foundation; David Meltzer, American Red Cross; Mark Feierstein, USAID; and Andrea Koppel (moderator), American Red Cross and the Henry L. Stimson Center.

For information or to RSVP, e-mail tbascia1@jhu.edu or call 202-6635982. Rome Auditorium. SAIS

p.m.

“Iraq’s New Government: What Can It Achieve?” a SAIS Conflict Management Program discussion with Daniel Serwer, SAIS. Event is open to the SAIS community only, and the speaker’s comments are off the record.

To RSVP, e-mail itlong@jhu .edu or call 202-663-5745. 812 Rome Bldg. SAIS Wed., Jan. 26, 12:30 p.m. “After

the Referendum: The Future of Sudan and South Sudan,” a SAIS African Studies Program discussion with Andrew Natsios, Georgetown University, and Omar Ismail, the Enough Project.

To RSVP, e-mail itolber1@jhu .edu or call 202-663-5676. 736 Bernstein-Offit Bldg. SAIS Thurs., Jan. 27, 12:30 p.m.

“Leading Through Civilian Power: The First QDDR (Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review),” a SAIS International Development Program discussion with Anne-Marie Slaughter, U.S. State Department. (See story, p.

3.) To RSVP, e-mail developmentroundtable@jhu.edu or call 201739-7425. A live webcast of the event will be accessible at www. sais-jhu.edu. Kenney Auditorium, Nitze Bldg. SAIS

“Predictors and Prediction Modeling of Loss to Follow-up, Immuno-Virologic Outcomes and Sub-Optimal Drug Adherence Among Adults Receiving HIV Antiretroviral Therapy in Nigeria,” an Epidemiology thesis defense seminar with Chuka Anude. W2030 SPH. EB

Tues., Jan. 25, 12:15 p.m.

Nobel laureate James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, provides a personal perspective this week on the process of scientific discovery. See Lectures.

Neff, SPH; an introduction by Keith West, SPH; and an address by Danielle Nierenberg, Worldwatch Institute. Co-sponsored by the Center for a Livable Future. Reception follows. W1214 SPH. EB

Eichelberger Ivey (1923–2010), founder of the Peabody Electronic Music Studio. Griswold Hall. Peabody

G RA N D ROU N D S

Mon., Jan. 24, 4:30 p.m.

“Male/ Female Differences in Susceptibility to Myocardial Ischemia/ Reperfusion Injury: Role of Nitric Oxide,” Pathology grand rounds with Charles Steenbergen, SoM. Hurd Hall. EB

Mon., Jan. 24, 8:30 a.m.

LE C TURES Tues., Jan. 25, 7:30 to 9 a.m.

Leaders + Legends Lecture—“The Future of Public Broadcasting”

by Paula Kerger, CEO and president, PBS. (See story, p. 7.) Business attire required. Sponsored by the Carey Business School. Legg Mason Tower, Harbor East.

“Insights Into How the Process of Scientific Discovery Actually Works: A Personal Account,” a Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences special lecture with James Watson, Nobel Prize–winning co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. (See photo, this page.) Hopkins ID required. Hurd Hall. EB

Wed., Jan. 26, 1 p.m.

The Harold and Marilyn Menkes Memorial Lecture—“Host Defense in the Lungs” by Clair Doerschuk, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Co-sponsored by Environmental Health Sciences and Physiology. E2030 SPH. EB Wed., Jan. 26, 4 p.m.

FORUM MUS I C Thurs., Jan. 27, 5 to 7 p.m.

“Innovations That Nourish the Planet: State of the World 2011,” an International Health forum with opening remarks by Roni

Tues., Jan. 25, noon. “Neurodevelopmental Genomic Strategies in the Study of Schizophrenia,” a Psychiatry seminar with Raquel Gur, University of Pennsylvania.

1-191 Meyer. EB Tues., Jan. 25, noon. “Oncogenic TGF-β Signaling in Breast Cancer,” a Biological Chemistry seminar with William Schiemann, Case Western Reserve University.

WBSB Auditorium. EB

D I S C USS I O N / TAL K S Mon.,

The David Bodian Seminar—“Tracking the Flow of Information Through the Hippocampal Formation in the Rat” with Josh Neunuebel, KSAS. Sponsored by the Krieger Mind/ Brain Institute. 338 Krieger. HW

Mon., Jan. 24, 4 p.m.

The Peabody Computer Music Consort performs a concert of contemporary music dedicated to Jean

Mon., Jan. 31, 7:30 p.m.

OPE N HOUSES

Open house and advising session for the Engineering for Professionals degree programs. Kossiakoff Center. APL

SEM I N ARS

“Domain Communication in Enzymatic Assembly Lines: NMR Reveals Transient Interactions in Non-Ribosomal Peptide Synthetases,” a Biophysics seminar with Dominique Frueh, SoM. 100 Mudd. HW Mon., Jan. 24, noon.

Mon.,

Jan.

24,

noon.

“TRAPed—Slowing Down Locomotion of Plasmodium,” a Biochemistry and Molecular Biology seminar with Jurgen Bosch, SPH. W1020 SPH. EB Mon.,

Jan.

24,

12:15

p.m.

“Computational Analysis of Kinesin Dynein Coordination in Axonal Cargo Transport,” a Carnegie Institution Embryology seminar with Ge Yang, Carnegie Mellon University. Rose Auditorium, 3520 San Martin Drive.

HW Mon.,

Jan.

24,

12:15

p.m.

“Clinical and Ethical Issues Raised by Advanced Dementia,” a Berman Institute of Bioethics noon seminar with Peter Rabins, SoM. W3008 SPH. EB Mon.,

Jan.

24,

1:30

p.m.

“Somatic and Stem Cell Engineering Therapies for Excitable Tissue Repair,” a Biomedical Engineering seminar with Nenad Bursac, Duke University. 709 Traylor. EB (Videoconferenced to 110 Clark. HW )

Wed., Jan. 26, noon. “A Role for Stearoyl-CoA Desaturase-1 in the Metabolic Syndrome,” a Biological Chemistry seminar with James Ntambi, University of WisconsinMadison. Mountcastle Auditorium. EB

Wed­ nesday Noon Seminar—“Genetic Bases for Addiction: Current Status” with George Uhl, NIDA. Sponsored by Mental Health. B14B Hampton House. EB Wed., Jan. 26, 12:15 p.m.

“The New Public Service Health Policy: Serving Rather Than Steering— Evaluation of Community Safety Promotion, Safety Awareness and Behavior Change in Taipei, Taiwan,” a Health Policy and Management thesis defense seminar with Yu-Pin Yan. 461 Hampton House. EB

Wed., Jan. 26, 3 p.m.

“Understanding the C. elegans Genome: modENCODE, Movies and Mutants,” an Institute of Genetic Medicine seminar with Robert Waterston, University of Washington. Mountcastle Auditorium. EB

Synaptic Perspective,” a Neuroscience research seminar with Jaideep Bains, University of Calgary. West Lecture Hall (ground floor), WBSB. EB Thurs., Jan. 27, 4 p.m. “Chromosomal Abnormalities Underlying Childhood Neurological Disorders,” a Biology seminar with Jonathan Pevsner, SoM. 100 Mudd. HW Mon., Jan. 31, noon. “The Role of Growth Factor Signaling and Aging Pathways in Neurodegenerative Diseases,” a Biochemistry and Molecular Biology seminar with Robert Kalb, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. W1020 SPH. EB Mon.,

“Systems Biology Approaches for Accelerating Vaccine and Drug Target Discovery in Trypanosoma cruzi,” a Molecular Microbiology and Immunology/Infectious Diseases seminar with Igor Almeida, University of Texas, El Paso. W1020 SPH. EB

Thurs., Jan. 27, noon. “Quantitative Molecular Profiling of Biomarkers for Pancreatic Cancer With Quantum Dots,” a Cell Biology seminar with Peter Searson, WSE. Suite 2-200, 1830 Bldg. EB Thurs., Jan. 27, 1 p.m. “Responding and Adjusting to Stress: A

31,

12:15

p.m.

Mon., Jan. 31, 4 p.m. “Empire Without Colonies,” a History seminar with Ed Gray, Florida State University. 308 Gilman. HW Mon., Jan. 31, 4 p.m. The David Bodian Seminar—“Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning” with Matthew Botvinick, Princeton University. Sponsored by the Krieger Mind/Brain Institute. 338 Krieger. HW Mon., Jan. 31, 4 p.m. “Characteristic Points on the Blowup Surface for Semilinear Wave Equation in Dimension One,” an Analysis/PDE seminar with Frank Merle, Universite de Cergy-Pontoise. Sponsored by Mathematics.

304 Krieger. HW

WOR K SHOPS The Center for Educational Resources sponsors a series of

workshops on the Blackboard 9.1 interface. The training is open to all faculty, staff and students in full-time KSAS or WSE programs who will serve as administrators to a Blackboard course. To register, go to www.bb.cer.jhu.edu. Garrett Room, MSE Library. HW •

Mon., Jan. 24, 10 a.m. to noon , and Mon., Jan. 31, 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. “Getting

Started With Blackboard.”

•

Tues., Jan. 25, 10 a.m. to noon. “Blackboard Commu-

nication and Collaboration.”

Wed., Jan. 26, 3 p.m.

Thurs., Jan. 27, noon.

Jan.

“Telomeres and Age-Related Disease,” a Carnegie Institution Embryology seminar with Mary Armanios, SoM. Rose Auditorium, 3520 San Martin Drive. HW

•

Wed., Jan. 26, 10 a.m. to noon. “Assessing Student

Knowledge and Managing Grades in Blackboard.”

Calendar

Key

APL BRB CRB EB HW JHOC

(Events are free and open to the public except where indicated.)

Applied Physics Laboratory Broadway Research Building Cancer Research Building East Baltimore Homewood Johns Hopkins Outpatient

Center KSAS Krieger School of Arts

and Sciences PCTB Preclinical Teaching Building SAIS School of Advanced

International Studies SoM School of Medicine SoN School of Nursing SPH School of Public Health WBSB Wood Basic Science Building WSE Whiting School of

Engineering