The Gazette

o ur 4 1 ST ye ar

RE C O G N I T I O N

S H RIVER H AL L CONCER T

Covering Homewood, East Baltimore, Peabody,

Institute of Medicine elects

Violinist Christian Tetzlaff,

SAIS, APL and other campuses throughout the

Richard Huganir, left, Jeremy

left, and pianist Lars Vogt make

Baltimore-Washington area and abroad, since 1971.

Nathans, Peter Pronovost, page 3

Baltimore debut, page 12

October 24, 2011

The newspaper of The Johns Hopkins University

E V E N T

Volume 41 No. 9

U N D E R G R A D U A T E S

Baking better bread

The arts: What is their role?

By Greg Rienzi

The Gazette

Continued on page 7

2

will kirk / homewoodphoto.jhu.edu

I

n the battle of right brain vs. left brain, The Johns Hopkins University is asking: Why not use both?

The past, present and future of the arts at Johns Hopkins came squarely into focus earlier this month as arts program leaders from other major uniDialogue versities visited the Homewood campus begins on to discuss the merplace of arts its of blending a full palette of creative endeavors into a train research ditionally researchinstitutions heavy environment.

The consensus was that the arts are essential.

Nearly 200 university faculty, staff, students, alumni and local arts leaders filled the Mattin Center’s SDS Room on Friday, Oct. 14, to take part in the Arts Futures Seminar, the 20th in a series of Futures Seminars that the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences began in September 2010.

For this seminar, participants came to learn about selected arts programs at Johns Hopkins and listen to representatives from Stanford, the University of Chicago and MIT, universities that have invested millions of dollars in artsrelated programs. Both Stanford and Chicago have launched signature arts initiatives that have included substantial investments in new facilities, programs, community outreach efforts and faculty.

Also participating was Mariet Westermann, vice president of the Mellon Foundation, who gave a keynote address.

Katherine Newman, the James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, said that this particular Futures Seminar had a purposefully wider scope than previous events in order to underline the desire for the arts programs, and the Peabody Institute, to join together.

“It seemed appropriate for us to consider both the individual [arts] programs

Using synthetic biology, the students created a VitaYeast loaf that they say both looks and smells like traditional bread.

Foreground: Team members Noah Young, Ashan Veerakumar and Steffi Liu. Rear: Arjun Khakhar and Daniel Wolozny.

To curb malnutrition, students use yeast to create vitamins in bread

By Phil Sneiderman

Homewood

A

ny way you slice it, a bread that contains critical nutrients could help combat severe malnutrition in impoverished regions. That’s the goal of Johns Hopkins undergraduates who are using synthetic biology to enhance common yeast so that it yields beta carotene, the orange substance that gives

G L O B A L

its color to carrots—and, when eaten, turns into vitamin A. The students’ project is the university’s entry in iGEM, the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition. After a regional judging earlier this month, the undergraduates’ project, Continued on page 5

H E A L T H

Jhpiego receives $24.9 mill to innovate lifesaving tech

By Ann LoLordo

Jhpiego

J

hpiego, a global health nonprofit organization affiliated with The Johns Hopkins University, will lead a $24.9 million effort to expand its array of simple inexpensive lifesaving technologies to address today’s global health challenges. A cooperative venture with three additional partners, the initiative will leverage the engineering and medical expertise of the university.

The five-year project, called Accelovate, is

In Brief

Poet Juliana Spahr; Hank Paulson on the U.S. and China; Peabody Dance master classes

12

funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and capitalizes on Jhpiego’s 40 years of experience in the developing world, its deep understanding of global health challenges and its substantial record of achievement in developing innovative health care solutions. The project marshals the ingenuity of Jhpiego’s partners—the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering’s Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design, Johns Hopkins’ Center for Global Health and Population Services International—to identify and develop health care technologies that create new markets, introduce them

C A L E N D AR

Food Day events; United Way Kick-off Breakfast; actor/comedian Aziz Ansari

in the field and implement them nationally and globally.

“This is an exciting new venture that builds on the breadth of Jhpiego’s technical expertise and practical experience in bringing low-cost innovative health care solutions to countries to prevent the needless deaths of women and families,” said Leslie Mancuso, Jhpiego’s president and CEO. As the project’s title conveys, Accelovate will identify and increase the movement of innovative but simple technologies from Continued on page 9

10 Job Opportunities 10 Notices 11 Classifieds

2 24,2011 2011 2 THE THE GAZETTE GAZETTE •• October August 15, I N B R I E F

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Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to speak at SAIS

H

enry M. “Hank” Paulson Jr., former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, will speak at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 25.

Paulson will talk about “The United States and China: Five Principles for Strengthening the Global Economy” at this event, which is co-hosted by SAIS and the University of Chicago, where Paulson is a distinguished senior fellow at the Harris School of Public Policy Studies.

Earlier this year, he founded the Paulson Institute, an independent center located at the University of Chicago and dedicated to fostering international engagement, with a special emphasis on relationships between the United States and China. The institute initially is concentrating on two areas: encouraging progress in environmental protection and the development of alternative sources of clean energy; and promoting economic activity and cross-investment between the two countries, leading to the creation of jobs.

From January 2009 to June 2010, Paulson was based at SAIS as a distinguished visiting scholar and Bernard L. Schwartz Forum on Constructive Capitalism fellow.

Non-SAIS affiliates who would like to attend the event, which will be held in the Nitze Building’s Kenney Auditorium, should RSVP to bit.ly/Paulson-oct25.

A live webcast of the event will be accessible at www.sais-jhu.edu.

Poet Juliana Spahr to read in English Department series

J

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uliana Spahr will be the next visiting poet in the Poetry at Hopkins English series, presented on the Homewood campus by the Department of English. She will read at 6 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 28, in Gilman Hall’s Marjorie Fisher Hall, Room 50.

A reception and book sale will follow the reading.

Spahr is the author of Well Then There Now (2011), This Connection of Everyone with Lungs (2005) and Response (1996), winner of the National Poetry Series Award, as well as a book of criticism, Everybody’s Autonomy: Connective Reading and Collective Identity (2001). Spahr also has edited a number of critical works, and from 1993 to 2003, she co-edited the arts journal Chain, which she co-founded with Jena Osman. In 2009, she received the Hardison Poetry Prize awarded by the Folger Shakespeare Library.

She lives in Berkeley, Calif.

The goal of the Poetry at Hopkins English series is to generate excitement around contemporary poetry, connecting the university

Editor Lois Perschetz Writer Greg Rienzi Production Lynna Bright Copy Editor Ann Stiller Photography Homewood Photography

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A d v e rt i s i n g The Gazelle Group B u s i n e ss Dianne MacLeod C i r c u l at i o n Lynette Floyd Webmaster Lauren Custer

to the wider community. The series will continue in the spring semester with readings by Alice Notley on March 6 and Lisa Robertson on April 20.

Peabody Dance holds master classes, ballet teachers’ seminar

P

eabody Dance, a division of the Peabody Preparatory, will welcome three distinguished guest artists at its Day of Master Classes and Ballet Teachers’ Seminar on Sunday, Oct. 30, at its dance studios at 21 E. Mount Vernon Place.

“The Day of Master Classes and Ballet Teachers’ Seminar brings us back to the heart of things by reaching out to dance colleagues and as many as 80 young dancers, primarily from the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions,” said Carol Bartlett, artistic director of Peabody Dance. “This type of service to the dance community has even greater meaning as we prepare for our centenary in 2014.”

This year’s guest artists, who will lead the morning master classes, are internationally known master teacher, coach and choreographer Laszlo Berdo, a former Boston Ballet principal dancer now on the faculty of the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet; regional ballet luminary Rhodie Jorgenson, a former American Ballet Theatre dancer now on the Maryland Youth Ballet faculty; and Marcia Dale Weary, the legendary artistic director/ founder of the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet.

The teachers’ seminar, co-led by Weary, Bartlett and Berdo, is called “The Art of Ballet Training: Teaching Fundamental Technique as a Pathway to Artistry and Performance.”

For details about the program, including tuition and registration, download the brochure by going to www.peabody.jhu.edu/ dance. More information is available by contacting Peabody Dance at 410-234-4626 or dance@peabody.jhu.edu.

P.M. Forni to discuss ‘Age of Distraction’ at Barnes & Noble

I

n his first two books, Choosing Civility and The Civility Solution, P.M. Forni taught readers the rules of civil behavior and ways of responding to rudeness.

Now the professor of Romance languages and literatures—and founder of The Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins—turns his attention elsewhere: In The Thinking Life: How to Thrive in the Age of Distraction, he gives readers remedies for dealing with today’s constant demands on their attention.

At 2 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 29, Forni will discuss and sign copies of the new book at Barnes & Noble Johns Hopkins.

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 Communications 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.

Phone: 443-287-9900 Fax: 443-287-9920 General e-mail: gazette@jhu.edu Classifieds e-mail: gazads@jhu.edu On the Web: gazette.jhu.edu Paid advertising, which does not represent any endorsement by the university, is handled by the Gazelle Group at 410343-3362 or gazellegrp@comcast.net.

October 24, 2011 • THE GAZETTE

3

R E C O G N I T I O N

Johns Hopkins scientists elected to Institute of Medicine B y M a r ya l i c e Y a k u t c h i k Stephanie Desmon

and

Johns Hopkins Medicine

T

hree pre-eminent researchers from Johns Hopkins—experts in memory, vision and patient safety—have been recognized for outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service with election to membership in the Institute of Medicine, one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine. Richard Huganir, Jeremy Nathans and Peter Pronovost were among 65 new members from the United States honored Oct. 17 at the organization’s 41st annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Huganir, who directs the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience, codirects the Johns Hopkins Medicine Brain Science Institute and is an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, recently discovered a memory eraser in mice that may someday translate to humans.

Nathans, a professor of molecular biology and genetics, neuroscience and ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and an investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has made fundamental discoveries in both basic and clinical vision science.

A professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine and surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Pronovost directs the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins and is senior vice president for patient safety and quality for Johns Hopkins Medicine, where he has transformed the way hospitals around the world think about bloodstream infections.

Richard Huganir’s career focus has been on synapses, the connections between nerve cells in the brain. His general approach has been the study of molecular and cellular mechanisms that regulate neurotransmitter receptors. His work has shown that the regulation of receptor function is a major mechanism for the regulation of neuronal Richard Huganir excitability and connectivity in the brain and is critical for many higher brain processes, including learning and memory and the proper development of the brain.

Among other advances last year, Huganir and his colleagues discovered in experiments with mice that by removing a protein from the region of the brain responsible for recalling fear, they can permanently delete traumatic memories.

Huganir received a doctorate in 1982 from the Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology Program at Cornell University, where he conducted his thesis research in the laboratory of Efraim Racker, and from 1982 to 1984 was a postdoctoral fellow with the Nobel laureate Paul Greengard at Yale University School of Medicine. He then became an assistant professor of molecular and cellular neurobiology from 1984 to 1988 at the Rockefeller University. In 1988, Huganir joined the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as an associate professor in the Department of Neuroscience and associate investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He became director of the department in 2006.

Huganir has served as treasurer of the Society for Neuroscience and received the Young Investigator Award and the Julius Axelrod Award from the Society for Neuroscience, as well as the Santiago Grisolia Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Jeremy Nathans is responsible for land-

mark discoveries that have changed our understanding of how we see the world— literally. His investigations into the mechanisms that allow us to see colors led him to identify the genes that code for color-vision receptors in the light-sensing cones of the retina. This breakthrough finding allowed him to show that variations in these genes cause color blindness. His work also has led to new understandings of the development, function and survival of the retina.

Nathans’ studies have revealed several defects that lead to human retinal diseases, including Stargardt disease, the most common type of macular degeneration in children and young adults. He also helped determine the cause of the vitelliform type of macular dystrophy, showing that it is caused by abnormalities in a member of a previously unknown family of ion channels, proteins that allow ions to enter and exit cells.

As a graduate student at Stanford, where he earned both an MD and a PhD, Nathans became interested in the study of the eye and the mechanisms of vision. He was the first scientist to apply molecular genetic approaches to the visual system, and over the past 30 years, his research has illuminated a broad landscape in human genetJeremy Nathans ics, ophthalmology, neurobiology, developmental biology and evolution. The retina, which he describes as a “mini-brain that processes an image in a number of ways,” may provide answers about how the human brain is built, he contends, revealing how embryonic cells make the right connections and are programmed to become the mature cells that they ultimately become.

Nathans, son of the late Nobel laureate Daniel Nathans, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In addition to the Champalimaud Foundation’s 2008 Antonio Champalimaud Vision Award, Nathans has received the Newcomb-Cleveland Prize, from the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the Initiatives in Research Award, from the National Academy of Sciences; the Young Investigator Award, from the Society for Neuroscience; the Cogan Award, from the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology; and the Golden Apple Award for Teaching Excellence, from the American Medical Student Association.

Peter Pronovost has brought a scientifically rigorous, common-sense approach to eliminating medical errors and unnecessary harm, shaping in the process the national conversation about patient safety. His biggest success to date: the much-heralded “cockpit-style” fivestep checklist for doctors and nurses designed to prevent Peter Pronovost central line–associated bloodstream infections. The simple checklist, coupled with a program that promotes a culture of safety, has transformed the way hospitals think about bloodstream infections, which kill more than 30,000 patients a year and sicken many thousands more. Thanks to Pronovost, these preventable infections are no longer seen as a cost of doing business.

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Pronovost and his team first dramatically reduced ICU bloodstream infections throughout the state of Michigan and then exported that success to hospitals across the nation and the world. His program is now in place in 47 states, Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia and many foreign countries. As he spreads the message that central line– associated bloodstream infections can be eliminated, he is also using the same strategies to prevent other harm, such as surgicalsite infections and pneumonias contracted through the use of ventilators.

In 2008, Pronovost was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, a so-called “genius grant,” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for exhibiting exceptional creativity and showing the promise to make important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment. That same year, he was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People.

He is the author of the book Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals: How One Doctor’s Checklist Can Help Us Change Health Care from the Inside Out, published in 2010. He is also author of more than 200 research articles.

The newly elected members raise the Institute of Medicine’s total active membership to 1,688 and the number of foreign associates to 102. With an additional 80 members holding emeritus status, the organization’s total membership is 1,870.

“It is a great pleasure to welcome these distinguished and accomplished individuals to the Institute of Medicine,” said the institute’s president, Harvey V. Fineberg.

“Each of them stands out as a professional whose research, knowledge and skills have significantly advanced health and medicine, and their achievements are an inspiration.

The Institute of Medicine is greatly enriched by the addition of our newly elected colleagues.”

The Institute of Medicine is unique in its

Related websites Richard Huganir:

neuroscience.jhu.edu/ RichardHuganir.php Jeremy Nathans:

neuroscience.jhu.edu/ JeremyNathans.php Peter Pronovost:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ anesthesiology_critical_care_ medicine/research/experts/ research_faculty/bios/pronovost .html National Academies:

www.nationalacademies.org Institute of Medicine:

www.iom.edu

structure as both an honorific membership organization and an advisory one. Established in 1970 as the health branch of the National Academy of Sciences, IoM has become recognized as a national resource for independent, scientifically informed analysis and recommendations on health issues. With their election, members make a commitment to volunteer their service on IoM committees and boards and for other activities.

Projects during the past year included studies on calculating vitamin D and calcium needs, improving the process for clearing medical devices for market, preventing obesity among infants and toddlers, improving Americans’ access to oral health care, preparing for the future of HIV/AIDS in Africa, ensuring the health of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and enhancing nurses’ roles in improving health care.

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4 24,2011 2011 4 THE THE GAZETTE GAZETTE •• October August 15,

YOUR CO-WORKERS ARE IN ON IT.

ARE YOU? United Way of Central Maryland helps our vulnerable neighbors meet their basic needs so they can get out of crisis, stay out of crisis and achieve self-sufficiency. You can help. All it takes is an extra five minutes, five dollars or five percent. How will you strive to give five?

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October 24, 2011 • THE GAZETTE

5

JHU enters into broad drug discovery collaboration with Eisai B y C h r i s t e n B r o wn

lee

Johns Hopkins Medicine

T

he Johns Hopkins University has entered into a drug-discovery research collaboration with Eisai, a pharmaceutical company based in Tokyo, to develop proprietary small-molecule drugs for a range of brain conditions such as schizophrenia, pain, brain tumors and Alzheimer’s disease.

The collaboration will operate as part of the Johns Hopkins Brain Science Institute’s NeuroTranslational Program, launched in 2009, which pairs seasoned commercial drug-discovery scientists with Johns Hopkins faculty to convert promising basic science discoveries into clinically useful treatments for neurological and psychiatric disorders.

Under the terms of the agreement, the Brain Science Institute, or BSi, will provide Eisai with novel therapeutic targets in the central and peripheral nervous system discovered by scientists at Johns Hopkins.

Bread Continued from page 1 called VitaYeast, has advanced to the iGEM finals, scheduled for Nov. 5 to 7 at MIT. In the annual contest, students from around the world present projects based on synthetic biology, a burgeoning field in which researchers manipulate small bits of DNA and other biological material to make cells carry out new tasks.

Some of the Johns Hopkins participants say that no matter what happens at the iGEM finals, they will continue to tout their enhanced bread as a relatively simple way to help hundreds of thousands of people who are suffering from malnutrition.

Team member Arjun Khakhar, a junior biomedical engineering major, grew up in Bombay, India, where he saw widespread poverty and malnutrition. “The major problem in developing countries right now is not that people are hungry and starving because they don’t have enough food,” he said.

“What people don’t have now is the [right type of] food that they need to survive. Vital nutrients like vitamins are just missing from their diets because they can’t afford fruits and vegetables. That’s what we wanted to provide through VitaYeast.”

Producing a new food to save malnourished people around the globe may sound like an audacious goal for 18 students who haven’t yet picked up their college diplomas.

But Khakhar doesn’t think so. “How do I get the idea in my mind that I want to change the world?” he said. “I would ask, How can

Using the assays developed and validated by the BSi NeuroTranslational Program, Eisai will conduct high-throughput screening of its proprietary compound library to identify chemical entities that interact with these targets. The ultimate goal of the collaboration is to identify clinical candidates and advance them to investigational new drugenabling studies. Eisai will have the option to enter into an agreement to develop and commercialize the new chemical entities, and will make upfront milestone and royalty payments on each selected drug discovery target.

“This is an exceptionally exciting, first-ofits-kind, collaboration with ‘big pharma,’” said Jeffrey D. Rothstein, the John W. Griffin, M.D., director of the BSi and of its NeuroTranslational Program. “It’s really a great opportunity to couple the superb tools and chemical libraries available at Eisai with the creative neuroscience opportunities available through BSi neuroscientists and clinicians. We enthusiastically welcome the opportunity to help find new drugs for a

wide range of neurological and psychiatric disease.”

Barbara Slusher, chief scientific officer for the BSi NeuroTranslational Program, said, “I see such a broad high-throughput screening collaboration as a true ‘win-win.’

At Johns Hopkins, we have access to many novel and cutting-edge projects but do not have an industry-grade chemical library to identify initial chemical leads for drug discovery. For Eisai,” she continued, “this would provide a source of clinical candidates potentially important for the treatment of brain disorders. This novel agreement offers a collaborative shared-risk approach and is representative of a new wave in academicpharma partnerships.”

The Johns Hopkins Brain Science Institute was established to answer fundamental questions about brain development and function, and to use these insights to understand the mechanisms of brain disease. This institute brings together neurologists and neuroscientists from across the university’s schools and campuses.

The BSi NeuroTranslational Program has a staff of drug discovery scientists, all with substantial experience in the pharmaceutical industry and capabilities in medicinal chemistry, HTS assay development, receptor pharmacology, enzyme kinetics, primary cell culture, preclinical toxicology, and drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics. The team is engaged in identifying novel drug targets arising from JHU faculty’s research and translating them into new drug therapies for neurological disorders.

you not have the idea that you want to change the world?”

To curb global malnutrition, Khakhar and his teammates envisioned an enhanced starter dough that could be shared easily and cheaply among large groups of impoverished people. The bread baked from this dough could avert health problems that occur when vitamins and other nutrients are missing from their diets. Such health problems can be serious. The World Health Organization has described vitamin A deficiency as the leading cause of preventable blindness in children.

Yeast, which makes bread rise, does not normally produce vitamins. To make this happen, the students, representing a variety of science majors, had to genetically tweak the single-cell microbes. The team members figured out how to add to yeast cells a certain DNA sequence that triggered a series of biochemical reactions that produced beta carotene, which the body turns into vitamin A. They presented that development at the iGEM regional contest and are continuing to work on yeast that also produces vitamin C, another crucial nutrient needed in impoverished areas.

As they worked on the VitaYeast project, the students were advised by Johns Hopkins faculty members, including Jef Boeke, a leading yeast expert who is a professor of molecular biology and genetics at the School of Medicine. “One of the great things about iGEM teams, which are mostly made up of undergraduates, is that those students, frankly, will not believe that something is impossible,” Boeke said. “If you tell them that something is impossible, they will go off and do it. I find that to be very exciting.”

Working in lab space provided by Boeke and other faculty members, the iGEM students solved the science challenges and produced samples of their enhanced dough.

But would VitaYeast yield bread that looks and smells good enough to eat? As all good cooks know, the proof is in the pudding— or, in this case, the bread basket. To find out, the students purchased a bread-making machine, found a simple recipe online and turned their lab into a makeshift kitchen.

“We wanted to simulate the process that a regular person might go through to bake bread,” said team member Steffi Liu, a junior biomedical engineering major from Edison, N.J. “The only thing that’s different in the recipe is that we substituted our vitamin A yeast for the normal dry packaged yeast.”

The resulting bread, she said, “looks exactly the same as normal bread. Definitely the same smell! The lab smelled amazing after we baked the bread. Everybody wanted a bite of it. But obviously we can’t do that.”

Because the lab bread contains a genetically engineered ingredient that has not undergone safety testing or received approval from government regulators, no one is permitted to eat it. But the students are encouraged by the tempting aroma and traditional breadlike texture and appearance.

In recent years, some genetically engineered foods have been rejected by malnourished people merely because they did not look, smell or taste like their familiar food staples. The Johns Hopkins students are banking on greater success, partly because they are thinking small. “VitaYeast is a tiny component—it gets killed in the bread,” said Noah Young, a senior biomedical engineering major from Irvine, Calif. “We’re not

genetically modifying the wheat. We’re not genetically modifying the flour or the water.

We’re genetically modifying something like 1 percent of the bread recipe. When you bake VitaYeast bread and you look at it, it looks like normal bread.”

As part of the project, team member Ashan Veerakumar, a senior neuroscience major from Toronto, has been surveying Baltimore-area residents about whether they would eat genetically modified food, particularly if it could improve their health.

“The thing we’re trying to find out here,” Veerakumar said, “is whether our project is something the public will accept.”

He and some of the other team members also are looking for outside funding to continue pushing the VitaYeast project forward.

Yet before VitaYeast bread can make its way to malnourished people, it must overcome many hurdles, including animal testing and rigorous regulatory reviews.

Still, faculty adviser Boeke is not betting against his student scientists. “Could this notion of releasing a genetically modified organism in a Third World country ever happen?” he asked. “Personally, I think the answer is yes.” Some of the iGEM students, Boeke said, “were ready to rush off and do it right away, and we had to restrain their enthusiasm.” Another faculty member, who is a bioethicist, was called in to urge the students to be more patient in pressing toward their goal. “She’s helped the students understand what the steps are needed to get to that point,” Boeke said. “That will certainly be a multiyear process, at best. But I think it could happen.” G To learn more about the VitaYeast project, go to 2011.igem.org/Team:Johns_Hopkins.

Related websites Johns Hopkins Brain Science Institute:

www.brainscienceinstitute.org BSi NeuroTranslational Program:

www.brainscienceinstitute.org/ index.php/neurotranslation

Survey reveals reasons doctors avoid online error-reporting tools B y V a n e ss a W a s t a

Johns Hopkins Medicine

T

oo busy and too complicated. These are the typical excuses one might expect when medical professionals are asked why they fail to use online error-reporting systems designed to improve patient safety and the quality of care. But Johns Hopkins investigators found instead that the most common reasons among radiation oncologists were fear of getting into trouble and embarrassment.

Investigators emailed an anonymous survey to physicians, nurses, radiation physicists and other radiation specialists at Johns Hopkins, North Shore–Long Island Jewish Health System in New York, Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Miami, with questions about their reporting near misses and errors in delivering radiotherapy. Each of the four centers tracks near

misses and errors through online intradepartmental systems. Some 274 providers returned completed surveys.

Few nurses and physicians reported routinely submitting online reports, in contrast to physicists, dosimetrists and radiation therapists, who reported the most use of error and near-miss reporting systems.

Nearly all respondents agreed that error reporting is their responsibility. Getting colleagues into trouble, liability and embarrassment in front of colleagues were reported most often by physicians and residents as reasons for not reporting.

More than 90 percent of respondents had observed near misses or errors in their clinical practice. The vast majority of these were reported as near misses as opposed to errors, and, as a result, no providers reported patient harm. Hospitals have specific systems for reporting errors, but few have systems to accommodate the complex data associated with radiotherapy.

“It is important to understand the specific reasons why fewer physicians participate in these reporting systems so that hospitals can work to close this gap,” said Johns Hopkins radiation oncology resident Kendra Harris, who presented an abstract of the data on Oct. 2 at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology.

“Reporting is not an end in itself,” she said.

“It helps identify potential hazards, and each member of the health care team brings a perspective that can help make patients safer.”

The good news, Harris says, is that few respondents reported being too busy to report or that the online tool was too complicated.

“Respondents recognized that error events should be reported and that they should claim responsibility for them. The barriers we identified are not insurmountable,” she said.

Harris says that online reporting systems should be simple and should be promoted as quality improvement tools, not as instruments for placing blame and meting out

sanctions. “These systems should not be viewed as punitive; rather, they’re a critical way to improve therapy,” Harris said. “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

Most of the respondents said that they would participate in a national reporting system for radiotherapy near misses and errors.

“A national system that collects pooled data about near misses and errors, which are thankfully rare, may help us identify common trends and implement safety interventions to improve care,” Harris said.

Apart from time spent by the investigators, no funding resources were utilized for this research. Oversight of the research was provided by Stephanie Terezakis and Eric Ford at Johns Hopkins. In addition to Harris, Terezakis and Ford, investigators involved in the research were L. Potters and R. Sharma, of North Shore–Long Island Jewish Health System; S. Mutic and H. Gay, both of Washington University in St. Louis; and J. Wright and M. Samuels, both of the University of Miami.

6 24,2011 2011 6 THE THE GAZETTE GAZETTE •• October August 15,

Report: Genetic switch allows cells to thrive in low oxygen

J

ohns Hopkins scientists have revealed a new way that cells respond to the challenge of low oxygen. A report on the discovery about how the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe regulates its genes in hypoxic conditions appeared online Oct. 20 in Molecular Cell.

S. pombe, a single-celled organism used as a discovery tool to reveal cellular processes often shared with humans, controls the flow of genetic information in response to low oxygen with a protein called Sre1, the Johns Hopkins team showed previously. Sre1 in fission yeast is turned on when oxygen in the environment is low and turned off when there’s sufficient oxygen. To investigate how that happens, the team dissected the signaling pathway in search of the switch.

“We found out that under conditions when Sre1 levels don’t change, this protein jumped onto DNA in the nucleus only under low oxygen conditions; otherwise, it was not on DNA,” said Peter J. Espenshade, an associate professor in the Department of Cell Biology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The reason, Espenshade said, is Ofd1, a protein whose function is not well-understood but which appears to be a direct sensor of oxygen. When oxygen is sufficient, Ofd1 attaches to Sre1, thereby preventing its binding with DNA and activation of genes.

To monitor the arrival of Sre1 to DNA, the team grew fission yeast cells in the presence of oxygen and then gradually shifted them to lower oxygen conditions. After set amounts of time, the cells were treated with a chemical that causes proteins to irreversibly attach to DNA. The cells were then broken open, and the scientists reached into the complex mixture of protein and DNA, fished out Sre1 and measured how much DNA was bound to it.

“We knew which genes were turned on during hypoxic conditions, so we knew where Sre1 was going when oxygen was low, but we wondered when it was arriving there,” Espenshade said.

The team saw that Sre1 bound with DNA after only 10 minutes of exposure to low oxygen conditions.

“The fact that this was such a rapid response gave us confidence that it was a

Related websites Peter Espenshade’s lab:

www.espenshadelab.com real and important mechanism for the cell to control hypoxic gene expression,” Espenshade said.

This new paradigm is in stark contrast to what’s understood about how mammalian cells regulate gene expression in response to low oxygen, which is regulated by changing the levels of a protein known as hypoxiainducible factor.

“The discovery of this new mechanism in fission yeast opens the door to the possibility that this also occurs in mammalian cells,” Espenshade said. “By showing that Ofd1 is an oxygen sensor and specifically binds proteins in the presence of oxygen, but not the absence of it, we now have a head start as we figure out what’s going on in human cells.”

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association.

Authors of the paper, in addition to Espenshade, are Chih-Yung S. Lee and Tzu-Lan Yeh, both of Johns Hopkins; and Bridget T. Hughes, currently of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

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Arts Continued from page 1 and where they are going and the intersection between them,” Newman said. “Since the Krieger School has not invested deeply in the arts, we need a more comprehensive road map to figure out what will permit them to flourish. Concentrating on the larger territory of the arts rather than only the component parts seemed wise.”

To set the stage, the seminar invited leaders of arts initiatives at the three peer institutions to present “case studies” of their successful arts endeavors.

The presenters from Stanford were Matthew Tiews, executive director of arts programs, and Stephen Hinton, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities; from Chicago, Larry Norman, deputy provost for the arts, and Bill Michael, executive director of the Logan Arts Center; and from MIT, Leila Kinney, director of arts initiatives.

Stanford’s arts initiative, launched in 2006, created new arts courses, added arts elements throughout the curriculum, strengthened existing programs and expanded partnerships among its divisions and with private institutions in the Palo Alto, Calif., area.

Stanford plans to create an “arts district” on its main campus, anchored by the existing Cantor Arts Center with the addition of a new performing arts center, a new building for its Department of Art and Art History, and several new classroom, studio, rehearsal and performance spaces.

The University of Chicago recently launched its own arts initiative, the centerpiece of which is a new 10-story, 184,000-square-foot arts center designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, which also designed the Mattin Center at Johns Hopkins. The $114 million facility, which is set to open in the spring, will house a 474seat performance hall, a 100-seat proscenium theater, a public art gallery, a 150-seat black box theater, a 129-seat film screening room and more than 90 individual rehearsal rooms, workshops, studios and classrooms.

The University of Chicago’s long list of arts-related efforts include the establishment of an annual program of residential arts fellowships, new professor of practice in the arts positions and the launch of a UChicago Arts Pass program that allows students entry into local museums and music halls.

Earlier this year, MIT released a white paper that emphasized that arts have been a core component of the educational mission of MIT and will play an even more significant role in the future. For the university’s 150th anniversary, MIT hosted a Festival of

Art + Science + Technology to celebrate the university’s multidisciplinary approach to art that included a “robotic” opera performance using a chorus of robots and a musical chandelier, a laser-light music show and kinetic illuminated sculptures.

Winston Tabb, Sheridan Dean of University Libraries at Johns Hopkins and co-chair of the Homewood Arts Task Force, said that he and many colleagues were inspired by both what they heard and the packed house at the Mattin Center.

“We were all very impressed by what Stanford, Chicago and MIT have done to advance the arts on their campuses in recent years,” Tabb said. “And we were equally impressed and touched by the large number of students and recent alumni who attended our seminar, asking very good questions and exhorting Johns Hopkins to move more rapidly to increase our focus on the arts, not as a replacement for other academic offerings but as a necessary complement to them.”

In her keynote address, Westermann said that the “arts are a way of learning and discovering the world and ourselves, and that reality needs to be reflected more robustly in academic offerings.”

Johns Hopkins is no stranger to the arts.

The university has the Homewood Art Workshops, an undergraduate Theatre Arts and Studies program, a dance program, the nationally renowned Writing Seminars, Film and Media Studies, the Program in Museums and Society and the Peabody at Homewood program. In terms of facilities, the Homewood campus has the Mattin Center, which includes the black box Swirnow Theater; the 125-seat Arellano Theater; the 1,100-seat Shriver Hall Auditorium; the 320-seat Schafler Auditorium; and the 106-seat Merrick Barn, home to the Theatre Arts Program.

Shortly after she became dean, Newman established the Arts Task Force, aimed at investigating the possibility of growing the arts on the Homewood campus. The task force is co-chaired by Tabb and Jeffrey Sharkey, director of the Peabody Institute.

At the seminar, Craig Hankin, director of the Homewood Arts Workshops, spoke about the ever-increasing popularity of the program’s courses, and the long waitlists.

The program had 165 students on waitlists just this past term. The courses are all offered as electives, as there is currently no visual arts major or minor at Homewood.

In his opening remarks, Hankin told those gathered how happy he was to be speaking about the arts to such a large crowd.

“I’m in my 31st year of teaching here at Johns Hopkins, and it’s no exaggeration to say that I’ve waited 31 years for this day,” Hankin said, drawing a roar of applause. “I would just like to thank again the efforts of

7

will kirk / homewoodphoto.jhu.edu

October 24, 2011 • THE GAZETTE

Johns Hopkins’ John Astin and Craig Hankin talk with Mariet Westermann of the Mellon Foundation.

Winston Tabb, Dean Katherine Newman, Eric Beatty and everyone here for putting this day together. I see great things on the horizon for all of us here.”

Beatty, director of Homewood Arts Programs, said he’s heard a chorus of student voices pleading for more arts offerings on campuses. In his talk, he read aloud letters from students exalting the role of the arts and how taking drawing, dance and theater courses enhanced their experience at Johns Hopkins.

Newman said that Johns Hopkins certainly doesn’t lack for creative people.

“We have amazing talent and extraordinarily devoted faculty and students,” she said after the seminar. “What we don’t have in most of our programs is a critical mass of full-time teaching professors and the space to accommodate all of the students who would like to participate, whether they are primarily interested in the arts or interested in adding an arts emphasis to their majors in the humanities, social sciences or science.”

Newman’s efforts to make the seminar a reality and focus more attention on the arts were lauded by both Hankin and Beatty.

“The artists in our community have waited a very long time to be recognized for the extraordinary contribution they make to Johns Hopkins,” Newman said. “Theirs has been a labor of love, and to see them assembled in one place and celebrated by exceptional leaders from the Mellon Foundation, MIT, Stanford and the University of Chicago was truly gratifying.”

Newman said the School of Arts and Sciences plans to host an external review committee of practicing artists and academic

experts in music, dance, theater and visual media from Brown, Duke, Columbia and the California Institute for the Arts later this month.

“They will examine our programs and advise us on how we might deepen and extend our work,” she said.

The Homewood Arts Task Force will later submit a formal report, which might include the recommendation of a permanent arts leadership structure.

Sharkey said that he hopes Johns Hopkins can build on this momentum and enthusiasm to expand its arts programs. He said that Peabody plans to play a vital role in any effort.

“We’ve long felt we have a lot to offer,” he said. “Peabody wants to spread its strengths to the Homewood campus and partner with Krieger and any signature arts initiatives of the university’s current capital campaign.”

He gave the example of a possible bachelor of arts in music degree program, offered jointly by the School of Arts and Sciences and Peabody.

The Futures Series previously focused on individual Krieger School departments and programs, including Political Science, Cognitive Science, Film and Media Studies, Chemistry and others.

The series will ultimately allow each department, program and discipline to examine the state of its field and where it’s headed in the coming decade.

The next Futures seminar will focus on mathematics, and be held from 3 to 6 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 27, in Mason Hall Auditorium. G

Practical play: Interactive video games valuable for ICU patients

By John Lazarou

Johns Hopkins Medicine

I

nteractive video games, already known to improve motor function in recovering stroke patients, appear to safely enhance physical therapy for patients in intensive care units, new research from Johns Hopkins suggests.

In a report published online in the Journal of Critical Care, researchers studied the safety and feasibility of using video games to complement regular physical therapy in the ICU. “Patients admitted to our medical intensive care unit are very sick and, despite early physical therapy, still experience problems with muscle weakness, balance and coordination as they recover,” said study leader Michelle E. Kho, an assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. “We are always looking for creative ways to improve rehabilitation care for critically ill patients, and our study suggests that interactive video games may be a helpful addition.”

For the study, the Johns Hopkins researchers identified a select group of 22 critically ill

adult patients who, over a one-year period, received video games as part of routine physical therapy. These patients were part of a group of 410 patients who received standard early physical therapy in the medical ICU during the same time frame from Johns Hopkins’ physical therapists. The patients in the study, mostly males ranging from 32 to 64 years of age, were admitted to the medical ICU as a result of health problems such as respiratory failure, sepsis and cardiovascular issues.

These 22 patients participated in 42 physical therapy sessions that included use of Nintendo Wii and Wii Fit video game consoles.

Almost half of the 20-minute sessions, all provided under the direct supervision of a physical therapist, were for patients who were mechanically ventilated. The most common video game activities were boxing, bowling and use of the balance board. The physical therapists chose these activities primarily to improve patients’ stamina and balance.

“As always, patient safety was a top priority, given that healthy people playing video games may be injured during routine gaming, but when properly selected and supervised by experienced ICU physical therapists, patients enjoyed the challenge of the

video games and welcomed the change from their physical therapy routines,” said senior author Dale M. Needham, an associate professor and medical director of the Critical Care Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Program at Johns Hopkins.

Needham said that video game therapy activities are short in duration, a time frame that is ideal for severely deconditioned patients, and very low in cost compared to most ICU medical equipment. Added to regular physical therapy, the video games can boost patients’ interest in therapy and motivation to do more therapy, he said.

The researchers caution that more research is needed to determine whether the games improve patients’ abilities to do the tasks that are the most important to them.

“Our study had limitations because the patients were not randomly selected, the video game sessions were infrequent, and the number of patients was small,” Kho noted. “Our next step is to study what physical therapy goals best benefit from video games.”

Other Johns Hopkins researchers in the study were Jennifer M. Zanni and Abdulla Damluji.

Kho receives funding support from a fel-

lowship award and the Bisby Prize, both from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research had no influence on the design of the study; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. The video game console and games were purchased by the Medical Intensive Care Unit at Johns Hopkins.

Related websites Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Johns Hopkins:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/rehab

Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ pulmonary Outcomes After Critical Illness and Surgery group at Johns Hopkins:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ OACIS

8 24,2011 2011 8 THE THE GAZETTE GAZETTE •• October August 15,

Reports of mental health disability increase in United States

By Tim Parsons

Bloomberg School of Public Health

T

he prevalence of self-reported mental health disabilities increased in the United States among nonelderly adults during the last decade, according to a study by Ramin Mojtabai, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

At the same time, the study found that the prevalence of disability attributed to other chronic conditions decreased, while

the prevalence of significant mental distress remained unchanged. The findings will appear in the November edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

“These findings highlight the need for improved access to mental health services in our communities and for better integration of these services with primary care delivery,” said Mojtabai, an associate professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Mental Health. “While the trend in self-reported mental health disability is clear, the causes of this trend are not wellunderstood.”

O C T .

For the study, Mojtabai reviewed data from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey covering 312,364 adults ages 18 to 64 years. He found that the prevalence of self-reported mental health disability of the nonelderly adult population increased from 2.0 percent in 1997–99 to 2.7 percent in 2007–2009. According to Mojtabai, the increase equates to nearly 2 million disabled adults. He also noted that the increase in the prevalence of mental health disability was mainly among individuals with significant psychological distress who had not used mental health services in the past year. Find2 4

–

3 1

Calendar “Why Did the Nazis Burn the Hebrew Bible?

Nazi Germany, Representations of the Past and the Holocaust,” a History seminar with Alon Confino, University of Virginia. 308 Gilman. HW

Mon., Oct. 24, 4 p.m.

The David Bodian Seminar—“A View of Vision as Dynamic Tuning of a General Purpose Processor” with John Tsotsos, York University, Toronto. Sponsored by the Krieger Mind/Brain Institute. 338 Krieger. HW

Mon., Oct. 24, 4 p.m.

Mon., Oct. 24, 4:30 p.m. “Moduli Spaces of Vector Bundles Over a Real Curve,” a Topology seminar with Tom Baird, Memorial University. Sponsored by Mathematics. 308 Krieger. HW Tues.,

Oct.

25,

10:45

“Molecular Engineering of Organic and Nanostructured Materials and Devices,” a Materials Science and Engineering seminar with Cherie Kagan, University of Pennsylvania. 110 Maryland. HW

Wed., Oct. 26, 3 p.m.

Continued from page 12

a.m.

“Trustworthy Medical Device Software,” a Computer Science seminar with Kevin Fu, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

B17 Hackerman. HW

“Dimension Reduction for Functional and Longitudinal Data,” a Biostatistics seminar with Jane-Ling Wang, University of California, Davis. W2030 SPH. EB

Wed., Oct. 26, 4 p.m.

Thurs., Oct. 27, 10:45 a.m.

“Membranes, Proteins, Curves and Clusters: From Physics to Disease,” a Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering seminar with Jonathan Sachs, University of Minnesota. 110 Maryland. HW Thurs., Oct. 27, noon. The Bromery Seminar—“Making Sense of Paleoclimate Data Using Climate Models: A New Approach to Paleo-Data Assimilation” with Kelly Kilbourne, UMCES Solomons Island Lab. Sponsored by Earth and Planetary Sciences. Olin Auditorium.

HW

“A Balancing Act: Force Transmission During Tissue Invagination,” a Biological Chemistry seminar with Adam Martin, MIT. 612 Physiology. EB Tues., Oct. 25, noon.

“Matrix Splitting Methods for BoundConstrained Quadratic Programming and Linear Complementarity Problems,” a Center for Imaging Science seminar with Daniel Robinson, WSE. 314 Clark. HW

Tues., Oct. 25, 1 p.m.

Tues.,

Oct.

25,

4:30

p.m.

“Sparse Models of Lexical Variation,” a Center for Language and Speech Processing seminar with Jacob Eisenstein, Carnegie Mellon University. B17 Hackerman. HW “Life of a Commensal-Pathogen: Candida albicans in Its Mammalian Host,” a Physiology seminar with Suzanne Noble, University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. 203 Physiology. EB

Wed., Oct. 26, noon.

Thurs., Oct. 27, noon. Advocacy and Action: Local, State, Regional and National Perspectives, the Health Policy and Management Fall Policy Seminar Series—This week, the Lobbyist Panel with Vinny DeMarco and Bob Douglas. The seminar includes a Q&A session and discussion. B14B Hampton House. EB Thurs., Oct. 27, noon. “Illuminating Paramyxoviruses: Recombinant Viruses Shed Light on Disease and Vaccines,” a Molecular Microbiology and Immunology/Infectious Diseases seminar with Paul Duprex, Boston University School of Medicine.

W1020 SPH. EB

“In vivo Studies of Synaptic Plasticity and Pathology,” a Neuroscience research seminar with WenBiao Gan, New York University School of Medicine. West Lecture Hall (ground floor), WBSB.

Hannig, University of North Carolina. 304 Whitehead. HW “The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment: Evidence From the First Year,” an Institute for Policy Studies Social Policy seminar with Katherine Baicker, Harvard School of Public Health. Cosponsored by the departments of Economics and of Health Policy and Management. 50 Gilman.

Thurs., Oct. 27, 4 p.m.

HW Thurs., Oct. 27, 4 to 6 p.m., and Fri., Oct. 28, 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The Futures Semi-

nar—Mathematics, with David Burns, King’s College London; Michael Hopkins, Harvard University; Igor Rodnianski, Princeton University; and Richard Schoen, Stanford University. (See story, p. 1.) Mason Hall Auditorium (Thursday) and Charles Commons (Friday). HW “Cancer Genomes and Their Implications,” a Biology seminar with Nickolas Papadopoulos, SoM. 100 Mudd. HW

Thurs., Oct. 27, 4 p.m.

“Multiresolution Theory for Microstructured Materials,” a Civil Engineering seminar with Wing Kam Liu, Northwestern University. 110 Maryland. HW

Fri., Oct. 28, 3 p.m.

Mon., Oct. 31, 1 p.m. “Mosquito Immunity to Diverse Pathogens,” an Immunology Training Program seminar with George Dimopoulos, SPH. Tilghman Auditorium, Turner Concourse. EB Mon., Oct. 31, 1:30 p.m. “Optimizing the Quantity/Quality Trade-off in Connectome Inference,” a Biomedical Engineering seminar with Carey Priebe, WSE. 110 Clark. HW (Videoconferenced to 709 Traylor. EB )

Oct.

26,

12:15

Mental Health Wednesday Noon Seminar—“Research Ethics” with Stephen Teret, SPH. B14B Hampton House. EB

Wed., Oct. 26, 8 a.m. United Way Kick-Off Breakfast. For more information on the campaign, go to www.jhu.edu/unitedway. Glass Pavilion, Levering. HW

The 2011 Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium—America’s Boundless Possibilities: Innovate, Advance, Transform, with actor and comedian Aziz Ansari of NBC’s Parks and Recreation. Talks are followed by a question-and-answer session and reception. Shriver Hall Auditorium. HW

Wed., Oct. 26, 8 p.m.

Mon., Oct. 24, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

“Food Day Teach-In,” a series of presentations by SPH faculty, staff

W OR K S H O P S Mon., Oct. 24, 3 to 7 p.m.

The Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality presents the first in its Material Emotionality workshop series. 132 Gilman. HW • “Negative Empathy” with Robin Curtis, Free University, Berlin.

• “Depression: A Public Feelings Project” with Ann Cvetkovich, University of Texas.

• “Strange Attractions: The Case of Hoarders and Things” with Jane Bennett, KSAS. Wed., Oct. 26, 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. “Testicular Toxicol-

SYMPOSIA

“PubMed,” an MSE Library workshop, open to all Johns Hopkins affiliates. To register, go to www .library.jhu.edu/researchhelp/ workshops.html.

Electronic Resource Center, M-Level, MSE Library. HW

ogy in vitro Models,” a Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing workshop with experts in testis physiology and toxicology, featuring active discussion sessions and short presentations from funding agencies who might support research in this area. Cosponsored by HESI Developmental and Reproductive Toxicology. Open to the general public.

Registration required; go to caat .jhsph.edu/programs/workshops/ testiculartoxicology.html. Mount Washington Conference Center.

Wed.,

Thurs., Oct. 27, 12:15 p.m.

Thurs., Oct. 27, 5 to 7:15 p.m., and Fri., Oct. 28, 8 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. The Carn-

SPECIAL EVENTS

don, Washington University in St. Louis, School of Medicine; Roberto Kolter, Harvard Medical School; David Relman, Stanford University School of Medicine; Karen Guillemin, University of Oregon, Eugene; Gary Huffnagle, University of Michican Medical School; Wendy Garrett, Harvard University School of Public Health. To register, go to www.ciwemb.edu/sites/ symposium2011. Sponsored by Carnegie Institution Embryology. Rose Auditorium, 3520 San Martin Drive. HW

“The 100Mile Meal,” a celebration of the inaugural Food Day with a fresh, local and sustainable meal and a panel discussion, “ ‘Real Food’: From Cafeterias to Communities,” with Brent Kim, Center for a Livable Future; Gladys Burrell, JHU food service worker and member of Unite Here Local 7; and urban gardeners Cheryl Carmona and Aliza Sollins of Boone Street Urban Farm. $5 per person. Sponsored by Real Food Hopkins. Salons A and B, Charles Commons Conference Center. HW Sat., Oct. 29, 5 p.m.

“The Honor of American Male Slaves,” a History seminar with Bertram Wyatt-Brown, KSAS. 308 Gilman. HW

Thurs., Oct. 27, 1:30 p.m.

“On Generalized Fiducial Inference,” an Applied Mathematics and Statistics seminar with Jan

Mon., Oct. 24, 6 p.m. “Architecture of Delight: The American Garden Folly” with architect Outerbridge Horsey. Last in the History in the Landscape lecture series, sponsored by University Museums as part of the 2011 Baltimore Architecture Month. Free admission but advance registration is requested.

Register by phone at 410-516-5589 or email to homewoodmuseum@ jhu.edu; walk-in registration based on availability. (Reception at 5 p.m. in Homewood Museum.) 50 Gilman. HW

Mon., Oct. 31, 4 p.m.

Thurs., Oct. 27, 1 p.m.

p.m.

and students on topics including food production, diet, food security, ending hunger and the famine in the horn of Africa. Sponsored by the Center for a Livable Future.

W1030 SPH. EB

“Secondhand Tobacco Smoke: A Source of Lead Exposure in U.S. Children and Adolescents,” an Institute for Global Tobacco Control research symposium with Ana Navas-Acien, SPH. Lunch will be provided. Open to the public; no RSVP needed. W1030 SPH. EB

EB Wed.,

ings showed that 3.2 percent of participants reported not having received mental health care for financial reasons between 2007 and 2009, compared to 2.0 percent from 1997 to 1999.

In a study published in August, Mojtabai and his colleagues found that prescriptions for antidepressant drugs by nonpsychiatrist providers without any accompanying psychiatric diagnosis increased more than 30 percent over the last decade.

The research was funded by the Center for Mental Health Initiatives at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

egie Symposium—“Microbes: Invisible Partners in Health” with keynote speaker Jeffrey Gor-

Oct.

26,

5

p.m.

Thurs., Oct. 27, 1 p.m. “Copyright and Fair Use,” a Bits & Bytes workshop. The training is open to full-time Homewood faculty, lecturers and TAs; staff are also welcome to attend. Registration is strongly encouraged; go to www.cer.jhu.edu/events .html. Sponsored by the Center for Educational Resources. Garrett Room, MSE Library. HW

October 24, 2011 • THE GAZETTE

Jhpiego

9

SPECIAL OFFER

ONE BEDROOMS FROM $880 MONTHLY

Continued from page 1

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pacious apartment living set in a prestigious hi-rise building. Adjacent to Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus and minutes from downtown Baltimore. Amenities include an on-site restaurant, salon and convenience store.

pauline lubens

the lab to the village to help save the lives of the most-vulnerable people.

Examples of such lifesaving technologies include Jhpiego-CBID collaborations on a simple self-test for pre-eclampsia/eclampsia, the second-leading cause of maternal deaths worldwide; and a low-cost, easy-to-use blood pressure device appropriate for use by nonliterate community health workers.

Harshad Sanghvi, Jhpiego’s medical director and vice president for innovations, said, “We believe that bringing together the community of biomedical innovators to focus on global health needs and engaging with commercialization partners very early in the process has the best chance to fast-track urgently needed low-cost solutions to save more lives.”

Accelovate will be led by Hans Vemer, as director of Program and Research Utilization; Sam Dowding, as program administrator for Accelovate; Soumyadipta Acharya, graduate program director of CBID, as co– research technical director; and Youseph Yazdi, executive director of CBID, as co– research technical director.

“As engineers we are looking at these very large clinical and public health needs with a fresh perspective,” said Yazdi, of CBID. “We are developing technologies here at Hopkins to solve these problems in simple, elegant ways. The result will be transformational medical innovations that will solve some of the world’s biggest health care challenges.”

Added Thomas Quinn, director of Johns Hopkins’ Center for Global Health, “The diverse faculty of JHU affiliated with our center have a strong commitment and dedication to improving the health of all people worldwide. The multidisciplinary approach to this innovative project will enable us to utilize the expertise of all partners to help build in-country capacity and bridge new

Whiting School graduate students Neil Shah, right, and Chris Chiang, second from right, both of the Center for Bioengineering, Innovation and Design, explain the ePartogram to participants in an innovations session at the Global Health Council 2011 conference, held in June. The ePartogram—an example of the innovative technology that will be championed by Accelovate—is designed to overcome the complexity and time-consuming nature of paper partograms so that midwives can increase both the volume and quality of care they provide.

research findings into practice, particularly for those technologies proven to improve health in low-resource settings.”

Accelovate will work to overcome technical, supply and policy obstacles to introducing health technologies into the lowresource settings that can benefit from them the most. The objectives of the project are to: • Identify and prioritize promising existing technologies and unmet needs for new technologies to address health development challenges; • Advance the introduction of innovative health technologies in developing country settings, bridging the “research-to-use” gap in conjunction with capacity building; • Lead efforts to scale up global access and utilization of transformational health technologies;

• Develop a significant subgrants program to support the achievement of the other objectives, including collaboration with other research and technology development partners worldwide; and • Engage in selective development of promising health technologies that are appropriate, affordable and acceptable for distribution and use in low-resource settings.

“Several well-meaning health care technology innovations aimed at low-resource settings never see the light of the day outside the university laboratory,” said Acharya, of CBID. “This program will enable an integrated approach toward identification, development and deployment of transformative new technological innovations for some of the biggest health care challenges on our planet.” G

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Expand your reach—and your horizons— with a degree from the Carey Business School The Carey Business School will provide you with the knowledge and tools you need to advance your career and excel as a leader in your professional field—or to explore a new field entirely. We offer a broad range of degree and graduate certificate programs, including: • The Johns Hopkins Global MBA (full time) • Weekend MBA, Executive MBA, Flexible MBA • MBA in Organization Development • MBA in Medical Services Management • Accelerated MS in Real Estate (full time) • MS degrees in Finance, Information Systems, Marketing, Real Estate (part time) • Graduate Certificates: Business of Medicine, Competitive Intelligence, Financial Management, Investments, Leadership Development Program for Minority Managers • Undergraduate: BS in Business

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Attend an upcoming information session at one of the following Johns Hopkins locations:

Wednesday, November 9 6 – 8 p.m.

Hodson Hall, Room 311 Homewood Campus

Monday, November 7 11 a.m.– 2 p.m.

Marburg Building Library East Baltimore Campus (Medical Institutions)

Monday, November 14 11 a.m.– 2 p.m.

Cafeteria Atrium Bayview Medical Center

You can also visit us at one of the following Kennedy Krieger health/benefit fairs, 10 a.m.– 4 p.m.: Wednesday, November 2 Leap Gymnasium 3825 Greenspring Drive Greenspring Campus

Wednesday, November 9 Turner Concourse East Baltimore Campus (Medical Institutions)

Please visit www.carey.jhu.edu/fallinfo to RSVP and for more information, including directions.

10 24,2011 2011 10 THE THE GAZETTE GAZETTE •• October August 15, H U M A N

R E S O U R C E S

B U L L E T I N

Notices

Hot Jobs

Adopt-a-Family/Adopt-a-Senior Registration — Johns Hopkins faculty, staff,

Listed below are some of the university’s newest openings for indemand jobs that we most urgently need to fill.

In addition to considering these opportunities, candidates are invited to search a complete listing of openings and apply for positions online at jobs.jhu.edu.

Homewood Office of Human Resources Wyman Park Building, Suite W600 410-516-7196

Fiduciary Services Specialist

Located at our Dupont Circle campus in Washington, D.C., is an exciting opportunity for a candidate with a strong service orientation and desire to work as a collaborator and a highly visible admissions professional in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences’ Advanced Academic Programs as it makes the transition to a paperless admissions process. For a more detailed job description and to apply, go to jobs.jhu.edu.

50257

Academic Services Supervisor

School of Medicine Office of Human Resources 98 N. Broadway, Suite 300 410-955-2990 Are you a mid-level care provider looking for a great employment opportunity? The Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine has several vacancies, all of which strive to provide state-ofthe-art patient care of the highest quality and compassion. The division is committed to both superb patient care and cutting-edge research. For a detailed job description and to apply, go to jobs.jhu.edu.

48971 48972 48973

Nurse Practitioner/Physician Assistant Nurse Practitioner/Physician Assistant Nurse Practitioner/Physician Assistant

Schools of Public Health and Nursing Office of Human Resources 2021 E. Monument St. 410-955-3006 The Division of Nutrition in the Bloomberg School’s Department of International Health is seeking several skilled applicants for exciting new openings at the USDA location. We are looking for individuals who have a bachelor’s degree in nutrition or a related field. For a detailed job description and to apply, go to jobs.jhu.edu.

50016 50018 50019 50020 50021

Dietitian Senior Research Assistant Senior Research Assistant Senior Research Assistant Senior Research Assistant

Johns Hopkins University is an equal opportunity employer and 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, other legally protected characteristics or any other occupationally irrelevant criteria.

Woodcliffe Manor Apartments

S PA C I O U S

G A R D E N A PA R T 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

to families, children and seniors in need of assistance during the holiday season.

Individuals and groups interested in adopting a family or senior should complete the registration form at hopkinsworklife.org/ community/adopt_fam_form.html no later than Friday, Dec. 9.

For more information on either the Adopt-a-Family or the Adopt-a-Senior Program, call 443-997-0338, email bmonroe6@ jhu.edu or go to www.hopkinsworklife.org/ community/adopt_family.html.

‘Stimulated’ stem cells found to stop donor organ rejection

By Stephanie Desmon

We have an immediate opportunity for a candidate who has an understanding and knowledge of the stock market and key elements of charitable gifts of securities, development/fundraising or other similar field that requires high-end customer service skills. For a detailed job description and to apply, go to jobs.jhu.edu.

49902

students and retirees are invited to help brighten the holidays for families and seniors facing hardships. The Office of Work, Life and Engagement partners with local nonprofit and social service agencies to provide gifts, clothing and grocery gift certificates

B O A R D

Johns Hopkins Medicine

J

ohns Hopkins researchers have developed a way to stimulate a rat’s stem cells after a liver transplant as a means of preventing rejection of the new organ without the need for lifelong immunosuppressant drugs. The need for anti-rejection medicines, which carry serious side effects, is a major obstacle to successful long-term transplant survival in people.

With a combination of a very low shortterm dose of an immunosuppressive drug to prevent immediate rejection and four doses of a medication that frees the recipient’s stem cells from the bone marrow to seek out and populate the donor organ, the rats lived more than 180 days with good liver function despite stopping both drugs after one week.

The researchers are also testing the method on other transplanted organs, including kidneys, in rats and other larger animals.

Essentially, the Johns Hopkins scientists transformed the donor liver from a foreign object under attack by the rat’s immune system into an organ tolerated by it, all in a matter of three months from the date of transplant, they report.

The technique, if replicated in humans, could mark a major shift in the process of organ transplantation, the researchers say. An article describing the experiment appears in the October issue of the American Journal of Transplantation.

“It is the dream for all scientists in the transplant field to erase the need for lifelong immunosuppressant drugs,” said study leader Zhaoli Sun, an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “Currently, if a patient survives for 10 or 20 years with a new liver, that organ is still seen as foreign inside its new body because immunosuppression puts blinders on the immune system that must stay on to prevent rejection. Our idea was to find a way to turn that organ into something that ‘belongs’ and is never at risk of rejection,” he said.

Although thousands of people with endstage liver disease have received lifesaving liver transplants in recent years, rejection remains a chronic risk. In addition, the expensive immunosuppressant drugs that they need increase the chance of developing severe infections and many kinds of cancers, and some patients have difficulty sticking to the cocktail of drugs that must be taken every day.

For their study, the researchers transplanted portions of the livers of one kind of rat (dark agouti) into another (Lewis-type).

For seven days after transplantation, the Lewis rats were treated with low-dose tacrolimus (an immunosuppressant), plerifaxor (a stem-cell stimulator) or a combination of the two. Twelve of the 13 rats that received a combination of the two drugs had longterm liver function and survived more than 180 days, while nearly all the remaining rats rejected their new livers after 12 days.

“This short-term treatment had long-term results,” said Sun, who also is director of Johns Hopkins’ Transplant Biology Research Center.

Typically, organ transplant recipients are given full doses of immunosuppressant drugs, such as tacrolimus, immediately after they

receive new livers. Otherwise, rejection quickly results, and the patients may die.

Sun and his colleagues gave the Lewis rats in their experiment the equivalent of one-10th the standard dose of tacrolimus.

The goal was to have the new liver experience some mild rejection but not enough to kill it. This “controlled rejection,” Sun said, appears to create injury signals in the body that cry out for stem cells to come and repair the damage being done to the new liver. It also prevents the new liver from regenerating itself with cells from the donor because it is under immunologic attack, leaving an opening for the recipient’s stem cells to jump in and play that role.

Sun and his colleagues used plerifaxor, a relatively new drug, which is known to free stem cells from the bone marrow and release them to circulate in the bloodstream. The drug is currently approved for patients about to undergo chemotherapy whose stem cells are harvested, frozen and then returned to the body after cancer treatment.

Sun says that in his experiment, many of these stem cells travel to the damaged liver to repopulate it with cells from the recipient, slowly taking over for the donor cells. He says the mechanism that brings the stem cells into the liver is becoming better understood, while the mechanisms by which stem cells become liver cells remain elusive. Equally interesting, Sun says, the stem cells also appear to modulate the immune response, increasing the number of regulatory T-cells and helping to reduce the chances of rejection.

“In our study, the risk of organ rejection is eventually eliminated because the liver is no longer a foreign object but comprised of many of the recipient’s own cells,” Sun said.

“Once the recipient’s stem cells take over, the body sees the regenerated liver as its own and works to protect it, not attack it.”

Sun and his colleagues found that within three months the majority of the liver cells in the transplanted organ belonged to the recipient, not the donor. When they used whole livers instead of partial livers, the process took a year. This suggests that the transformation process is jump-started by transplanting partial livers because the organ already “needs” to regenerate itself to most effectively function, he says.

Sun cautions that clinical trials with human organ transplant patients might be years away, and only if further research in animals confirms the method’s safety and value.

The technique might prove useful not only at the time of a new transplant but even after years of immunosuppressant drug use, he says.

This research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and Genzyme Inc. Other Johns Hopkins researchers who worked on the study are Andrew M. Cameron, Robert A. Montgomery, Masayuki Hisada, Takehiro Okabayashi and George M. Williams.

Related website Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Transplant Center:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ transplant

October 24, 2011 • THE GAZETTE

Classifieds APARTMENTS/HOUSES FOR RENT

Butchers Hill/Patterson Park, 1BR + office in single-family TH, all appls, W/D, hdwd flrs, patio. $875/mo + utils. 410-988-3137 or richardson1886@gmail.com.

Canton (Boston St Shipyard Condominiums), beautiful 1BR, 1.5BA condo, 2 flrs, spiral stairs to bedroom, 1 prkng space in gated lot. $1,400/mo. Dave, 443-570-5492.

Cross Keys Village, 3BR, 2.5BA TH, access to swimming pools and tennis courts, avail Nov 1. $2,300/mo. maison.my@gmail.com.

Deep Creek Lake/Wisp, cozy 2BR cabin w/ full kitchen, call for wkly/wknd rentals. 410638-9417 or jzpics@yahoo.com (for pics).

Ednor Gardens, 3BR, 2BA in historic neighborhood nr JHU, inlaid wood flrs, new appls, sunrm, no smokers/no pets. $1,600/ mo. dewi.smith@gmail.com.

Fells Point, 3BR, 1BA house, 3-stories, office, laundry, shed, storage, walking distance to JHH/shuttle/Carey Business School. $1,100/ mo + utils. 410-283-1730 or zaremaz2003@ yahoo.com.

Mt Vernon, 1BR apt in historic mansion on St Paul St, hdwd flrs, great rm is 21' x 12' w/east-facing windows, BR is 12' x 12', window AC, radiators throughout, lg closet, 1 blk to laundry, Charm City Circulator stop on blk, on JHU shuttle line, quiet neighbors. $899/mo. 919-302-3910.

Mt Washington, 3BR, 2.5BA condo, dw, W/D, CAC, lg balcony, garage prkng, lg swimming pool and tennis court, nr I-83/ light rail, avail Nov 1. $1,400/mo + utils.

443-220-2138 or hLhuang@gmail.com.

Owings Mills, 2BR, 2BA condo, W/D, walk-in closets, storage, prkng, swimming pool/tennis court privileges, backs to woods, conv to metro, walk to grocery, 1-yr lease. $1,250/mo. 410-336-7952 or ljohnsto@ mail.roanoke.edu.

Patterson Park, EOG rehab, 2BRs w/walkin closets, 2.5BAs, stainless steel appls, granite counters, home theater, fp, prkng pad. $1,850/mo + utils. 410-900-8803 or flightrnsteve@msn.com.

Towson, 5BR house w/2.5 BAs, new kitchen, appls, hdwd flrs, next to university. $2,500/mo. 410-236-1504.

Towson, 3BR rancher w/double BA, central gas heat and AC, fin’d bsmt, fenced yd, openair garage. 410-821-0058 or hlfreycorp@ yahoo.com.

2BR, 2BA condo, walking distance to JHU/ Hopkins shuttle, AC, gym, W/D in apt, swimming pool. $1,900/mo incl all utils (elec, water, heat) and prkng space. 410-662-1169.

HOUSES FOR SALE

Edgemere, MD, 5BR waterfront house on 0.8 acre, dead-end road, no water problems,

Rodgers Forge 3 BD; 2 BA, THS. $245,000.

Great price! Beautifully updated! Newer white kitchen w/pass window, DR w/sliders to deck. Fin. LL family room, updated systems & roof, beautiful HWD floors. Wide street for easy parking.

Seller is very motivated.

Lorrie Geiss, GRI

443‐690‐3378, 410‐453‐0500

lorrie.geiss@lnf.com Need more? Go to MDHomefinder.com

Open House Sun., Oct. 30th, 1-3pm.

11

M A R K E T P L A C E

move-in ready. $699,000. 49nurse@comcast .net.

Gardenville, 3BR, 1.25BA RH in quiet neighborhood, new kitchen and BA, CAC, hdwd flrs, club bsmt w/cedar closet, fenced maintenance-free yd w/carport, 15 mins to JHH. $130,000. 443-610-0236 or tziporachai@ juno.com.

Guilford, 1BR, 1BA condo, 2 blks to Homewood campus and shuttle stop, move-in ready. $155,000. 410-206-9632 or mmollazadeh@ gmail.com.

fully furn’d, all basic amenities, queen bed in rm, closet, ceiling fan, W/D in unit, safe location, nr shuttle stops, walk to MTA bus stop. $800 (for month and a half) incl all utils and Internet. 443-928-7783.

Sand beach chairs (2), inkjet printer, oilfilled heaters (3) and baseboard heaters (2), portable canvas chair, keyboard case, 100W amplifier. 410-455-5858 or iricse .its@verizon.net.

ITEMS FOR SALE

SERVICES/ITEMS OFFERED OR WANTED

Conn alto saxophone, in excel cond. 410488-1886.

Mature but relaxed prof’l looking for a rm, sublet, apt or share in the Charles Village vicinity, beginning Nov 1 (flexible). 347403-2066 or josephmauricio@yahoo.com.

Belkin Surf N300 wireless and wired router, all parts incl’d (but not orig box), $30; copy of Intro to Quantum Mechanics, 4th edition,

by Liboff, hardcover, covers, binding and pages nearly flawless. $80. 201-669-0967.

Basic treadmill, Tivo box, wireless router, Queen Anne coffee table. $20/ea. wreisig4@ comcast.net.

Chinese tutor available for students interested in learning the language. 443-956-4255.

Matlab tutor avail (GUI, image processing, engineering), flexible schedule, rate varies case by case but low rate guaranteed. ghgb253@gmail.com.

Guilford, amazing, fully renov’d 3BR, 3BA architect-designed condo, 2,900 sq ft (incl huge terrace), gourmet kitchen, living rm, dining rm, family rm, 2 prkng spaces, located at JHU shuttle stop, 5-min walk to Homewood campus. 410-366-8507 or jz1234@ earthlink.net.

New exterior French doors, music cassette tapes, fitness chair, 21" TV, 35mm cameras, silk flowers and vase, Asian decor pillows, office file units, men’s travel bag, dining rm set, full-length silver fox coat, BlackBerry Bold accessories, other misc items. 443-8242198 or saleschick2011@hotmail.com.

Stata tutor needed, knowledge of survival models, fixed effects, first differences a plus, once a wk, Friday afternoons. 202-277-0885 or jfclogston@gmail.com.

Owings Mills New Town, 2BR condo, nr metro, ready for immediate sale. www.4409silverbrook.info.

Yamaha Yas23 alto sax, like new. $775.

Suzette, 443-912-8055.

Certified nursing asst avail, 17 yrs’ experience w/seniors and nanny care. Linda, 443467-2833.

Rosedale, 4BR house in quiet neighborhood, 2 full BAs, all appls, lovely new kitchen, offstreet prkng, move-in cond at an affordable price. $199,900. 410-499-2139.

Timonium/Lutherville, 4BR, 2.5BA house, 5 fin’d levels, fp, hdwd flrs, nr I-83, easy access to all Hopkins campuses. $420,000.

Val, 443-994-8938.

ROOMMATES WANTED

Rms in Owings Mills TH, W/D, dw, Internet, quiet neighborhood, 10 mins to metro. $500/ mo (each). 443-841-2098 or gjhoward@ gmail.com.

Nonsmoker wanted for furn’d 700 sq ft BR in 3BR house in Cedonia owned by young F prof’l, bright, spacious, modern kitchen w/ convection oven, walk-in closet, landscaped yd, lg deck, free prkng, public transportation to JHU, wireless Internet incl’d. $550/mo + utils. 410-493-2435 or aprede1@yahoo.com.

Share all new refurbished TH w/medical students, 4BRs, 2 full BAs, CAC, W/D, dw, w/w crpt, 1-min walk to JHMI, 924 N Broadway. gretrieval@aol.com.

Quiet prof’l wanted for BR in TH 10 mins from Homewood, walk to MTA #11 bus, must be quiet, very clean, nonsmoker, love dogs, credit and background check req’d. $500/mo-to-mo incl cable, WiFi, heat/H20. jennyedd@gmail.com.

F prof’l/grad student wanted by married prof’l to share 2BR, 1BA apt in Linthicum. $575/mo incl all utils. 302-724-0044.

Married prof’l from Delaware seeks F prof’l/ grad student to share apt in Linthicum, 2BRs, 1BA. $575/mo incl everything. 302724-0044.

F prof’l wanted for lg, unfurn’d BR in 3BR home nr Ft Meade, on golf course, gym area, community swimming pool, tennis court, walking/running trails. $700/mo + 1/3 elec and 1/3 cable + $400 sec dep (terms negotiable). Timisha, 301-887-3066 or timishalp@ hotmail.com.

Sublet: F wanted for lg BR in 2BR, 1BA apt in Charles Village, avail Oct 6 to Nov 14,

Oak entertainment center, $500; 1967 Wurlitzer Americana jukebox w/100+ 45 records; baby swing, like new, $55; Fender acoustic guitar, $200; best offers accepted.

Chris, 443-326-7717.

Antique art deco furniture: 2 loveseats in eggplant velvet, $1,000/pair; 7-pc dining set (table, chairs, buffet, cabinet) in gold oak w/red trim, $1,000. Chris, cgarvan@ verizon.net.

Fisher-Price Smart Cycle Racer, physical learning system, like new, used twice, 2 game cartridges incl’d. $65. 443-803-7401.

Floor lamps (2), $10; plastic storage boxes (3), $5; wireless router, Belkin model F6D4230-4, v2, $20; bookshelf (free). Roy, 303-332-6418.

Women’s shoes, size 7, new or like-new, photos avail. 443-850-1404 or bmusicki@ yahoo.com.

Boy’s toddler clothes, sizes 18mo to 2T, pants ($2/ea), shirts ($1.50/ea), in excel cond.

443-303-9047.

Conn trombone, nice horn. $175. Suzette, 443-912-8055.

Sea Hawk 5-seat pedal boat, 110 lbs, holds up to 825 lbs, 3 position cranks, aluminum tiller steering system, protective rub rail, built-in cooler, $300; Maytag side-by-side refrigerator, white, 24 cu ft, water/ice dispenser, $475/best offer. 410-913-3481 or 410-979-6634.

Round wood kitchen table w/4 chairs, $175/ best offer; twin bed w/metal frame, mattress, boxspring, sheets incl’d, $110; KidCo Configure safety gate w/2 fence and 1 gate sections, $60; buyer must pick up. 202-3608468.

17-ft Coleman canoe, red, 3 paddles, 1 seatback, 4 aluminum rain gutter mount yokes (uses two 2x4 cross beams). $215. drabold@ gmail.com.

Studios - $595 - $630 1 BD Apts. - $710-740 2 BD from $795

on Hickory Avenue in Hampden!

2 BD units from $760 w/Balcony - $790!

Shown by appointment 410.764.7776 www.BrooksManagementCompany.com

Clarinet and piano lessons offered by Peabody master’s student. 240-994-6489 or hughsonjennifer@gmail.com.

F French teacher wanted for high school student to practice conversation and reading comprehension, 1 hr per wk on Saturday. tLwang21212@yahoo.com.

Transmission repairs, rebuilt or used, 20% discount for all JHU employees, free estimate, 8am-10pm. 410-574-8822.

Hauling/junk removal, next-day pickup, free phone estimate, 15% discount for all Hopkins. 410-419-3902.

Affordable and professional landscaper/certified horticulturist available to maintain existing gardens, also designing, planting or masonry; free consultations. David, 410683-7373 or grogan.family@hotmail.com.

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

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

Clean up for winter, pet-friendly and reliable cleaning service, one time or wkly service, special rates. 443-528-3637.

Friday Night Swing Dance Club, open to public, great bands, no partners necessary.

410-663-0010 or www.fridaynightswing.com.

Mobile auto detailing and power wash service. Jason, 443-421-3659.

Masterpiece Landscaping: knowledgeable, experienced individual, on-site consultation, transplanting, bed preparation, installation, sm tree and shrub shaping; licensed.

Terry, 410-652-3446.

Tutor for all subjects/levels; remedial and gifted; also help w/college counseling, speech and essay writing, editing, proofreading. 410-337-9877 (after 8pm) or i1__@ hotmail.com.

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:

HICKORY HEIGHTS WYMAN COURT Just Renovated! A lovely hilltop setting Beech Ave. adj. to JHU!

Piano lessons, patient instruction from experienced teacher w/Peabody doctorate.

410-662-7951.

• 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 • October 24, 2011 O C T .

2 4

–

3 1

Calendar COLLOQUIA

Thurs.,

Oct.

27,

3:45

“The Unraveling: Pakistan in the Age of Jihad,” an Applied Physics Laboratory colloquium with John Schmidt, George Washington University. Parsons Auditorium. APL Fri.,

Oct.

28,

2

p.m.

Mon., Oct. 31, daylong. The Lavy Colloquium—“Jews and Empire,” with various speakers.

(The event continues on Nov. 1.) Sponsored by the Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Jewish Studies Program. Smokler Center for Jewish Life (Hillel). HW

DANCE Sun., Oct. 30, daylong. Annual Day of Master Classes and Ballet Teachers’ Seminar with guest artists Laszlo Berdo, Rhodie Jorgenson and Marcia Dale Weary. (See In Brief, p. 2.) Two sessions of classes from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. , and the Ballet Seminar led by Weary, Berdo and Carol Bartlett, Peabody Dance director, from 2:15 to 5:15 p.m. Sponsored

by Peabody Dance. Downtown Dance Studios, 21. E. Mt. Vernon Place. Peabody

DISCUSSIONS/ TALKS Mon.,

Oct.

24,

4:30

Shriver Hall Concert Series celebrates its 46th season with the Baltimore debut of two internationally acclaimed artists, violinist Christian Tetzlaff and pianist Lars Vogt. Tetzlaff, one of world’s most sought-after violinists, was a 2010–2011 Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist and has been in demand as a soloist with many of the leading orchestras and conductors, including recent performances with the Boston and Chicago symphonies, and he performs at all major festivals including those in Edinburgh and Lucerne, and at the BBC Proms. Vogt has rapidly become one of the leading pianists of his generation and was appointed the first-ever pianist in residence for the Berlin Philharmonic. He has performed recently with the New York Philharmonic, Boston and Chicago symphonies, Royal Concertgebouw and Vienna Philharmonic. On Sunday evening, the two perform works by Schumann, Bartok and Brahms. See Music.

p.m.

“From Scenes to Cognitive Maps: Spatial Navigation Systems in the Human Brain,” a Cognitive Science colloquium with Russell Epstein, University of Pennsylvania. 111 Krieger. HW

Tues., Oct. 25, 12:30 p.m. “The United States and China: Five Principles for Strengthening the Global Economy,” a SAIS discussion with former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson. (See In Brief, p. 2.) Co-sponsored by the University of Chicago. To RSVP, go to bit.ly/paulson-oct25. Kenney Auditorium, Nitze Bldg. SAIS Tues.,

Oct.

25,

5:30

p.m.

“Global Health Careers: Access to Experts,” a panel discussion with Rebecca Shore, SPH; NiiAmah Stephens, SPH; Kristin Weinhauer, SoN; and Soma Ghoshal, United Nations Foundation. Sponsored by the Center for Global Health and Career Services. W1030 SPH. EB Wed.,

Oct.

26,

12:30

p.m.

“Into the Syrian Revolution,” a SAIS Middle East Studies Program discussion with Radwan Ziadeh, director, Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies, and Ammar Abdulhamid, human rights activist and founder of the Tharwa Foundation. To RSVP, email katarina@jhu.edu. 500 Bernstein-Offit Bldg. SAIS “The Argentine Elections in Review,” a SAIS Latin American Studies Program discussion with Riordan Roett and Francisco Gonzalez, both of SAIS. For more information, call 202-663-5734 or email jzurek1@jhu.edu. 517 Nitze Bldg.

Wed., Oct. 26, 12:45 p.m.

SAIS

“IRP Fellows Report on the World,” a SAIS International Reporting Project discussion with IRP fellows Emily Alpert (Bolivia), Alex Daniels (Benin), David Francis (Nigeria), Alex Gallfent (Swaziland), Matt Jenkins (Taiwan), Krista Mahr (South Sudan), Megan Verlee (Ethiopia), Andrea

Thurs., Oct. 27, noon. p.m.

“China and a Dual Leadership Structure in the Asia-Pacific,” a Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies discussion with Quan­ sheng Zhao, American University. To RSVP, call 202-663-5812 or email reischauer@jhu.edu. 806 Rome Bldg. SAIS

27,

noon.

Thurs., Oct. 27, 7 to 8:30 p.m.

“From Cyclohydrolase to Oxidoreductase and Back: Mechanism and Structure in an Enzyme Superfamily,” a Chemistry colloquium with Dirk Iwata-Reuyl, Portland University.

233 Remsen. HW

“Space Design: Raymond Loewy, Habitability Consultant for NASA’s Skylab,” a History of Science, Medicine and Technology colloquium with Layne Karafantis, KSAS. 330 Gilman. HW

Oct.

EB

Tues., Oct. 25, 4:15 p.m.

Thurs., Oct. 27, 3 p.m.

Thurs.,

LunchLearnLink—“Translating Great Science Into Products: Programs Available Through the Maryland Biotechnology Center” with Judith Britz, Maryland Biotechnology Center. W1214 SPH.

“La Revue Poesie, 40 Years,” a German and Romance Languages and Literatures all-day colloquium with author Michel Duguy, with guests Claude Mouchard, Hedi Kaddour and Martin Rueff. 388 Gilman. HW Tues., Oct. 25, daylong.

Wed., Oct. 26, 3:30 p.m. “Clusters of Galaxies and the CMB Radiation,” an STSci colloquium with Rashid Sunyaev, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics/Garching. Bahcall Auditorium, Muller Bldg. HW

the Master of Liberal Arts Program, offering a chance to learn about the program’s admission requirements, curriculum design and course structure and to chat with the program director. RSVP online at mla.jhu.edu/rsvp/index .html?ContentID=3343.

Wenzel (Thailand), Jennifer Willis (Ireland) and Jamie York (Malaysia). To RSVP, call 202663-7726 or email irp@jhu.edu.

806 Rome Bldg. SAIS Fri.,

Oct.

28,

12:30

p.m.

“The Role of the Private Sector in Sustainable Agriculture,” a SAIS International Development Program discussion with Beth Keck, Walmart. A Year of Agriculture event co-sponsored by the Net Impact Club. To RSVP, call 202-870-6677 or email developmentroundtable@ jhu.edu. 200 Rome Bldg. SAIS “Execution in the Mut Temple: Precinct Execration Ritual, Human Sacrifice or Capital Punishment?” a SAIS African Studies Program discussion with Betsy Bryan, KSAS. For information, call 202663-5676 or email itolber1@jhu .edu. Rome Auditorium. SAIS

Fri., Oct. 28, 6:30 p.m.

“The Birth of the First Republic in Asia,” a SAIS China Studies Program discussion with Mi Chu and July Lu, both of the Library of Congress. To RSVP, call 202663-5816 or zji@jhu.edu. 806 Rome Bldg. SAIS

Mon., Oct. 31, noon.

F I L M / V I D EO Wed., Oct. 26, 7 p.m. Screening of Chunking Express, sponsored by Women, Gender and Sexuality in conjunction with its workshop series, Material Emotionality. (See “Workshops,” p. 8.)

113 Greenhouse. HW

Online information session for the Master of Science in Environmental Sciences and Policy degree program, offering a chance to learn about the program’s admission requirements, curriculum design, course structure, degree requirements and how online education works. RSVP online at advanced.jhu.edu/rsvp/index .html?ContentID=3334.

L E C T URE S

“Poly (ADP-ribose) Regulates Micro­ RNA Activity and Stress Responses in the Cytoplasm,” an Institute of Genetic Medicine lecture by Anthony Leung, SPH. Tilghman Auditorium, Turner Concourse. EB

Wed., Oct. 26, 2 p.m.

The Alexander Kossiakoff Lecture in Biophysics—“Principles of Architecture and Mechanism at Chemical Synapses” by Eric Gouaux, Oregon Health and Science University.

Sponsored by Biophysics(KSAS/ SoM) and Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry (SoM). WBSB Auditorium (ground floor). EB

Wed., Oct. 26, 4 p.m.

Wed., Oct. 26, 7 to 8:30 p.m.

Online information session for

Peabody Opera Potpourri. Free, but advance tickets required; call 410-234-4800. Friedberg Hall.

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

Peabody

REA D I N G S / B OO K T A L K S

Poetry at Hopkins English presents Juliana Spahr. (See In Brief, p. 2.) A reception and book sale will follow the reading. Sponsored by English. 50 Gilman. HW

Fri., Oct. 28, 6 p.m.

Sat., Oct. 29, 2 p.m. P.M. Forni will discuss and sign copies of his latest book, The Thinking Life: How to Thrive in the Age of Distraction. (See In Brief, p. 2.) Barnes & Noble Johns Hopkins. HW

S E M I N AR S

“Mysteries of Neurodegeneration: Lessons Learned in ALS,” a Biochemistry and Molecular Biology seminar with Jiou Wang, SPH. W1020 SPH. EB

Mon., Oct. 24, noon.

Mon.,

Oct.

24,

12:15

Mon., Oct. 24, 12:15 p.m.

The Berman Institute of Bioethics Noontime Seminar— “Institutional Capacity Development for Research Ethics Systems in Developing Countries: A Missing Link?” with Adnan Hyder, SPH. W3008 SPH. EB Mon., Oct. 24, 1 p.m.

“Kafka’s Labyrinth,” a German and Romance Languages and Literatures seminar with Bettine Menke, University of Erfurt. 479 Gilman.

Mon.,

Mon., Oct. 31, 5:15 p.m.

HW

MUSIC Tues., Oct. 25, 8 p.m. The Sylvia Adalman Chamber Series— The Peabody Trio performs music

by Ravel and Mahler. $15 general admission, $10 for senior citizens and $5 for students with ID. Friedberg Hall. Peabody Fri., Oct. 28, 7:30 p.m. The Peabody Jazz Orchestra performs the music of Thad Jones. $15 general admission, $10 for senior citizens and $5 for students with ID. East Hall. Peabody

The Preparatory Young People’s String Program presents its Halloween concert. Friedberg Hall. Peabody

Sun., Oct. 30, 2 p.m.

The Shriver Hall Concert Series presents the Baltimore debut of violinist Christian Tetzlaff and pianist Lars Vogt, performing music by Schumann, Bartok and Brahms.

p.m.

“Line 1 Retrotransposition in the Nervous System,” a Carnegie Institution Embryology seminar with Alysson Muotri, University of California, San Diego. Rose Auditorium, 3520 San Martin Drive. HW

Thurs., Oct. 27, 3 p.m. The Ninth Annual Barton Childs Lecture—“THE Philadelphia Story”

by Janet Rowley, University of Chicago. Sponsored by the Institute of Genetic Medicine and the Human Genetics Graduate Program. Mountcastle Auditorium, PCTB. EB

Sun., Oct. 30, 5:30 p.m.

I N FOR M A T I O N SESSIONS

(See photo, this page.) $38 general admission, $19 for non-JHU students; free for JHU students.

Shriver Auditorium. HW

“Fatal Attraction: A New Story Featuring the Immune System and Cancer,” an Immunology Training Program seminar with Elizabeth Jaffee, SoM. Owens Auditorium, CRB. EB Oct.

24,

1:30

p.m.

“Pushing the Limits of Biological Fluorescence Microscopy,” a Biomedical Engineering seminar with Eric Betzig, Janelia Farm Research Campus. 709 Traylor.

EB (Videoconferenced to 110 Clark. HW ) Continued on page 8

(Events are free and Calendar

open to the public Key

except where indicated.)

APL BRB CRB CSEB

Applied Physics Laboratory Broadway Research Building Cancer Research Building Computational Science and

Engineering Building EB East Baltimore HW Homewood JHOC Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center KSAS Krieger School of Arts

and Sciences NEB New Engineering Building 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