The Gazette

o ur 4 1 ST ye ar

B lA C K H I S T ORY MO N T H

OBIT UARY

Covering Homewood, East Baltimore, Peabody,

Cedric Jennings shares his

Alejandro Rodriguez, former

SAIS, APL and other campuses throughout the

American odyssey in event’s

director of Child Psychiatry,

Baltimore-Washington area and abroad, since 1971.

opening ceremony, page 12

has died at 93, page 3

January 30, 2012

The newspaper of The Johns Hopkins University

Volume 41 No. 20

G I V I N G

C O L L A B O R A T I O N

United Way campaign tops its goal

Please do touch the art

By Greg Rienzi

The Gazette

Continued on page 3

2

will kirk / homewoodphoto.jhu.edu

I

n a resounding show of support for the community’s needs, employees and students of the university and Johns Hopkins Medicine pledged nearly $2.3 million to United Way of Central Maryland, topping the goal by $100,000.

More than $270,000 of the Employees total was pledged to the Johns Hoprespond to kins Neighborhood Fund, which needs with supports agencies that serve com$2,270,742 munities in close proximity to Johns in pledges Hopkins campuses and have a strong relationship with the university and its employees.

The Neighborhood Fund was the second-largest designated organization of Johns Hopkins donors, behind only United Way of Central Maryland. A committee representing a cross section of university employees will meet in the near future to allocate the funds.

The overall $2,270,742 raised represents a total for contributions from all university divisions except SAIS, whose donations are reported to the National Capital Area campaign in Washington, D.C., and the Applied Physics Laboratory, which no longer publicly reports its financial goals and results. In 2010, the total raised was $2,179,464.

United Way of Central Maryland supports human service agencies in Baltimore City and its five surrounding counties. With donations still filtering in, $560,423 has been pledged to the university’s campaign, which kicked off Oct. 11 and officially ended Dec. 16.

Jerry Schnydman, executive assistant to the president and secretary of the board of trustees, chaired the university’s campaign for the second consecutive year. Schnydman said that he benefited from last year’s experience. “This allowed me to have a better understanding of the job and allowed us to put together a wonderful team of volunteers,” he said.

Johns Hopkins neuroscientist Steven Hsiao and Walters curator Joaneath Spicer are partnering to determine why physical contact with works of art can be so satisfying. Museum visitors can register their preferences and other reactions.

Show at The Walters pairs research interests of professor and curator

By Lisa De Nike

Homewood

I

t’s the first rule at any art museum: Do not touch the artifacts. Except at this museum and at this one time.

At the Touch and the Enjoyment of Sculpture: Exploring the Appeal of Renaissance Statuettes exhibition at The Walters Art Museum, open now through April 15, visitors are invited to disregard that decree and to hold, stroke and even caress the pieces.

In fact, handling the objets d’art, which include replicas of famous 16th-century statuettes that are part of the Walters collection, is one of the reasons behind the exhibition, explains neuroscientist Steven Hsiao of the Johns Hopkins Brain Science Institute, which is partnering with the Walters on Continued on page 7

R E S E A R C H

Live liver donation safer than previously thought Surgery to donate portion of liver does not interfere with long, healthy life

By Stephanie Desmon

Johns Hopkins Medicine

P

eople who donate a portion of their livers for transplant to a relative or friend whose liver is failing can gener-

In Brief

Shuttle changes announced; free student rush tix at Peabody; JHU’s Peace Corps rankings

12

ally expect to recover safely from the donation surgery and live a long, healthy life, Johns Hopkins researchers have found.

“The donor process is safer than some have previously thought,” said transplant surgeon Dorry L. Segev, an associate professor of surgery and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and leader of the study published in the February issue of the journal Gastroenterology. “Live liver donation is a serious operation with serious risks. However, in this largest study ever conducted in the United States, we

have shown that it is safer than many previously believed, with a risk of death of 1.7 per thousand donors.”

The only treatment for end stage liver disease is transplant. Without a functioning liver, patients in liver failure die. Safe live liver donation is possible because the liver is an organ that regenerates itself relatively quickly, Segev notes, allowing the harvest of a small portion of the organ that, when transplanted, grows into a liver large Continued on page 4

10 Job Opportunities Nineteenth-century foodies; ‘Fire Safety in 10 Notices 11 Classifieds America’; ‘Advanced Lithium Batteries’ C ALE N D AR

2 30, 2011 2012 2 THE THE GAZETTE GAZETTE •• January August 15,

You strive for excellence in learning, research and caring for others. Our business is to take good care of you.

Call today for Move-In Specials!*

866-830-4938 3501 St. Paul St., Baltimore, MD 21218

Short-term leases available on Furnished or unfurnished studios & 1 - 2 bedroom units!

Controlled access, elevator building with fantastic views of downtown Baltimore!

Located in historic Charles Village.

Walk to JHU - Homewood, shops, and restaurants!

Directly across from Barnes & Noble Johns Hopkins, JHU Shuttles & public transportation and close to the Inner Harbor. Laundry & Fitness Center on site!

I N B R I E F

Panel to discuss impact of new resident work hour regulations

J

ohns Hopkins will host a panel discussion today, Jan. 30, on the new medical resident work hour regulations put in place last year by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. The panelists will share their thoughts on how the regulations impact patients and their families, newly minted residents and the culture of medicine.

The event will take place at 4 p.m. in The Johns Hopkins Hospital’s Hurd Hall.

“Trading Risks: The Impact of Resident Work Hour Regulations on Patients, Providers and the Future of Health Care” will feature the viewpoints of a diverse group of health care stakeholders affected by the recent work-hour restrictions. The discussion—featuring School of Medicine faculty, a second-year resident and a patient advocate—will be moderated by Catherine DeAngelis, editor in chief emerita of JAMA. Prominent medical ethicist and author Charles Bosk, of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Bioethics, will deliver a keynote lecture, which will be followed by a group dialogue and reception.

The event is sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Medicine Distinguished Speaker Series and the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. Panel members will be available for questions after the event.

Shuttle schedule changes are announced for two routes

G

oing into effect today, Jan. 30, is a new schedule for the HomewoodPeabody-JHMI Shuttle, which now includes additional express shuttles departing JHMI during afternoon rush hours.

Some minor changes have been made to departure times for the Homewood-Mount Washington shuttle. In addition, passengers may now request stops along the designated route, providing they can deboard at a safe location; drivers cannot pick up passengers other than at designated stopping zones.

To see the revised schedules, go to parking .jhu.edu. Questions or comments should be addressed to the Parking Office at shuttles@ jhu.edu or 410-516-7275.

866-498-6143 500 W. University Parkway Baltimore, MD 21210

Short-term leases available!

Furnished or unfurnished studios, 1 & 2 BD Apartments Washer/ Dryer in each home!

Newly upgraded interiors! Brand NEW fitness center with cardio theatre & lounge! Across from JHU’s Homewood campus in Roland Park!

Café & Restaurant on premises. Balconies with panoramic views of the city. Reserved garage parking. Surveillance and key lock entry system.

Roof top pool!

‘Student rush’ tix available for February Peabody concerts

A

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

On Saturday, Feb. 4; Friday, Feb. 10; Wednesday, Feb. 15; and Tuesday, Feb. 28, the tickets will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis to students from Johns Hopkins and other colleges beginning one hour before each performance (7 p.m. for the Feb.

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

Enjoy the Best in Apartment Living at a Morgan Properties Community! www.morgan-properties.com

*Certain Restrictions Apply Limited Time Offer-On Select apartment homes!

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

4, 10 and 28 concerts, which start at 8 p.m.; 6:30 p.m. for the Feb. 15 concert, which is at 7:30 p.m.). Rush tickets may not be reserved in advance. They may be obtained, while they last, only by students who appear with ID at a rush table opposite the Peabody Box Office at 17 E. Mount Vernon Place.

On Feb. 4, DMA candidate Eunkyung Yoon, winner of the Harrison L. Winter Piano Competition, will perform Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra. Yoon is a student of Yong Hi Moon. On Feb. 10, the Peabody Concert Orchestra will play Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A major and Britten’s Sinfonia da requiem. The conductor for both concerts will be Hajime Teri Murai.

On Feb. 15, Jason Ham of the West Point Band will be the euphonium soloist for the world premiere by the Peabody Wind Ensemble of UFO Concerto by Johan de Meij. Harlan D. Parker will conduct. Finally, on Feb. 28, GPD candidate Yuri Shadrin will be the soloist for a performance of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major by the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, conducted by his teacher, Leon Fleisher.

All concerts are in Miriam A. Friedberg Concert Hall. For complete program information, go to www.peabody.jhu.edu/events.

JHU rises on the Peace Corps’ annual top colleges rankings

J

ohns Hopkins University has risen on the Peace Corps’ Top 25 list of small schools producing Peace Corps volunteers. With 22 alumni currently serving, Johns Hopkins is now No. 5 in the rankings.

Last year the university ranked No. 6.

Since Peace Corps’ inception, 674 alumni of the university have served in the program.

The Peace Corps ranks its top volunteerproducing schools annually according to the size of the student body. Small schools have less than 5,000 undergraduates. The rankings are calculated based on fiscal year 2011 data as of Sept. 30, 2011, as self-reported by Peace Corps volunteers.

The top small college/university in the rankings was the University of Mary Washington, with 29 alumni currently serving.

New issue of ‘SAISPHERE’ looks at global agriculture

T

o coincide with the school’s “Year of Agriculture,” SAIS’ annual magazine, SAISPHERE, explores the theme “Growth Ahead for Global Agriculture.”

In this year’s just-published issue, members of the SAIS faculty, scholar, alumni and student community offer more than a dozen perspectives in pieces that travel the globe from Brazil and Argentina to India, China and Africa.

An online version of the issue is available on the Web at media.sais-jhu.edu/saisphere.

C o n t r i b u t i ng W r i t e r s 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, 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 443275-2687 or gazellegrp@comcast.net.

January 30, 2012 • THE GAZETTE

3

O B I T U A R Y

Alejandro Rodriguez, former director of Child Psychiatry, dies at 93 Venezuela native studied with field’s founders, carried on their legacy B y E k at e r i n a P e s h e va

Johns Hopkins Medicine

A

lejandro Rodriguez, associate professor emeritus of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, a skillful and creative physician who conducted pivotal studies on autism and developmental disorders, and a caregiver who was known for his light touch with the most vulnerable patients, died Jan. 20 of heart failure complications in Palm City, Fla. He was 93.

Students and colleagues recall Rodriguez’s superb clinical skills, intuitive approach with children and infectious personality.

“He could help his young patients tell us what they were worried about, sorry about and/or fearful of,” said Ray DePaulo Jr., director of the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. “He had a delightful twinkle in his eye and used his Venezuelan accent to great advantage when asking young patients to tell us about themselves.”

Rodriguez’s legendary talents as a physician drew medical students, residents and faculty to his consultations. They all flocked to his office to see him in action, colleagues recall.

“Dr. Rodriguez was a wonderful mentor and colleague,” said Johns Hopkins Children’s Center Director George Dover. “He taught generations of residents at our Harriet Lane primary care clinic to look and see beyond the lab tests and the physical exam in order to learn how patients and families really felt.”

Rodriguez trained in the 1950s, when child psychiatry was still a young discipline.

He studied under and later worked alongside some of the field’s giants. Rodriguez’s mentor at Johns Hopkins was the venerable Leo Kanner, the founding father of the discipline, who coined the term autism and, in 1935, wrote the first textbook in child psychiatry.

Later, Rodriguez and Kanner collaborated on several seminal autism studies. One of them was a 30-year follow-up of the original 11 children diagnosed at Johns Hopkins with autism and described the long-term outcomes of the disorder in children as they age.

Rodriguez also worked with Leon Eisenberg, the Johns Hopkins pediatric psychia-

United Way Continued from page 1 “And the volunteers made it happen.”

The campaign featured several successful fundraising events, including Homewood Student Affairs’ Bingo, which raised more than $3,000, and the School of Arts and Sciences’ Block Party, which raised $1,166.

Several of the university’s designated units far exceeded their goals and had record participation. Notably, Homewood Student Affairs surpassed its goal by $4,596. The highest participation rate came from the Office of Government and Community Relations, with 48 percent of staff making a pledge. The Carey Business School had the second-highest participation rate, with 43 percent of its 143 employees making a pledge.

Johns Hopkins Medicine launched its intensive two-week United Way effort in October and raised $1,710,319, exceeding its goal by nearly $70,000. The focus was access to healthy food, a topic that clearly resonated with those on the East Baltimore campus, said campaign chair Ted DeWeese.

“The issue of access to healthy food affects

Alejandro Rodriguez

trist who infused child psychiatry with rigorous research methods and conducted early studies in autism, attention deficit disorder, learning disabilities and language manifestations of behavioral problems. The two collaborated on a study of school phobia in children, publishing in 1959 a classic paper that described school phobia syndrome as a variant of separation anxiety.

Rodriguez blossomed under Kanner’s and Eisenberg’s mentorship and took their work a step further.

“Alejandro carried out and amplified the founding fathers’ legacy by enhancing the clinical and teaching aspects of child psychiatry,” said James Harris, director of Developmental Neuropsychiatry and a former director of Child Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center whom Rodriguez taught and later recruited.

Those who knew Rodriguez invariably describe him as a wise man and a brilliant physician known for his clinical acumen.

“Dr. Rodriguez was a master teacher and extraordinarily insightful clinician whose case consultations and supervision were sought out by both Pediatric Psychiatry fellows and rotating Harriet Lane residents,” said Richard McCarrick, who completed a Pediatric Psychiatry fellowship under Rodriguez and is now vice dean of the School of Medicine at New York Medical College.

Rodriguez was also an enthralling and cultured raconteur whose knowledge was as expansive as his interests were varied, McCarrick added.

“His conversation readily ranged from the

a lot of neighborhoods. We live in a city with so-called food deserts, where it’s not easy to walk a safe distance to find healthy and affordable food. But it’s not just here; it’s out in Carroll County and other places around the state,” said DeWeese, a professor and chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology and Molecular Radiation Sciences at the School of Medicine. “We were clearly able to link this issue to the work that goes on here, such as the research at the School of Medicine and School of Public Health.”

DeWeese said that the United Way coordinators in each department and division did an “extraordinary” job of putting forward the right message.

The overall campaign focused on funding 1,600 nonprofit organizations in Central Maryland that provide assistance in the basic-need areas. The 2011 theme was “Strive for Five,” which had a number of connotations. An employee could make a pledge of $5 per pay period, recruit five colleagues to donate, increase by 5 percent the amount normally contributed or choose another creative approach.

Although the campaign has officially ended, donations are needed and welcome all year. To make a pledge, or for more information on the campaign, go to www.jhu.edu/ unitedway. G

technique of leading matadors to the qualities of Flemish portraiture,” he said.

Rodriguez believed that a medical case was never fully closed and for that reason he never really stopped being his patients’ physician. He helped find hospital jobs for some of his former patients and held a weekly continuity clinic whose doors were open to former patients in need of help.

“He epitomized empathy and the concept of social responsibility,” said Lawrence Pakula, an associate professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins, who did a yearlong rotation in Child Psychiatry under Rodriguez. “He knew that being a physician didn’t end at the office.”

“Alejandro belonged to a generation that understood that being a physician was a privilege that came with social commitment, and he led by example,” said Catherine DeAngelis, a professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins and former JAMA editor, who trained under and worked with Rodriguez.

When Rodriguez found out that DeAngelis played the guitar, he encouraged her to play for the children on the psychiatry unit as a form of play therapy.

Rodriguez worked closely with Alex Haller, the first director of Pediatric Surgery at Johns Hopkins. He regularly consulted with Haller to address the psychological and emotional needs of children undergoing surgery, or those with traumatic injuries.

“From the beginning of General Pediatric Surgery, Dr. Rodriguez asked to make rounds with the surgeons, especially with critical care patients, and added valuable insight into the impact of various operative procedures,” Haller said.

Even in retirement, Rodriguez was much sought after for advice in difficult psychiatric cases and was always available with his wise counsel, which he shared with great wit and

compassion, Haller added. But Rodriguez’s warm personality and intuitive wisdom also rendered him the unofficial emotional consultant for the entire Department of Pediatrics, those who knew him said.

Rodriguez was born Feb. 5, 1918, in Caracas, Venezuela, where he also earned a medical degree. In 1942, he came to Johns Hopkins on a private scholarship to train in pediatrics under the esteemed pediatrician in chief Edwards Park in the famed Harriet Lane Home for Invalid Children, the predecessor to today’s Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

Upon completion of his residency, Rodriguez returned to Venezuela, where he practiced for 13 years. Then, at the age of 38, he decided to pursue training in psychiatry. He returned to the United States and spent a year at Stanford but completed his psychiatry training at Johns Hopkins, to which he’d always wanted to return. A job offer followed.

In 1968, Eisenberg stepped down as a division chief and Rodriguez became director of Johns Hopkins’ Division of Child Psychiatry. He held that post until his retirement in 1978 but remained active for many years after. He continued to see patients until he was 85, said his son, Ignacio Rodriguez, a Johns Hopkins–trained neurologist.

Rodriguez also saw patients at the St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore for 15 years.

In 1977, he wrote a clinical manual titled Handbook of Child Abuse and Neglect.

A memorial service will be held at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 4, at the Holy Redeemer Church in Palm City, Fla. Donations can be made to the church.

Rodriguez’s remains will be brought to Maryland to be buried alongside his beloved wife, Maria, the family said.

In addition to his son, Ignacio, Rodriguez is survived by his daughter-in-law, Lolita, and grandchildren Carlos and Maria Rodriguez.

Physician’s weight may influence obesity diagnosis and care B y N ata l i e W o o d - W r i g h t

Bloomberg School of Public Health

A

patient’s body mass index may not be the only factor at play when a physician diagnoses a patient as obese. According to a new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the diagnosis could also depend on the weight of the physician.

Researchers examined the impact of physician BMI on obesity care and found that physicians with a normal BMI, as compared to overweight and obese physicians, were more likely to engage their obese patients in weight loss discussions (30 percent vs.

18 percent) and more likely to diagnose a patient as obese if they perceived the patient’s BMI met or exceeded their own (93 percent vs. 7 percent). The results are featured in the January issue of Obesity.

“Our findings indicate that physicians with normal BMI more frequently reported discussing weight loss with patients than overweight or obese physicians. Physicians with normal BMI also have greater confidence in their ability to provide diet and exercise counseling, and perceive their weight loss advice as trustworthy, when compared to overweight or obese physicians,” said Sara Bleich, lead author of the study and an assistant professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health Policy and Management. “In addition, obese physicians had greater confidence in prescribing weight loss medications and were more likely to report success in helping patients lose weight.”

Using a national cross-sectional survey of 500 primary care physicians, Bleich and colleagues from the Johns Hopkins School

of Medicine assessed the impact of physician BMI on obesity care, physician self-efficacy, perceptions of role modeling and perceptions of patient trust in weight loss advice.

Physicians with a self-reported BMI below 25 kg/m2 were considered to be of normal weight, and physicians reporting a BMI at or above 25 kg/m2 were considered overweight or obese.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity affects more than one-third of the U.S. adult population and is estimated to cost $147 billion annually in related health care costs. Obesity increases the risk of many adverse health conditions, including type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke and high blood pressure. Despite guidelines for physicians to counsel and treat obese patients, previous studies have found that only one-third of these patients report receiving an obesity diagnosis or weight-related counseling from their physicians.

“While our results suggest that obesity practices and beliefs differ by physician BMI, more research is needed to understand the full impact of physician BMI on obesity care,” suggest the study’s authors.

“Physician self-efficacy to care for obese patients, regardless of their BMI, may be improved by targeting physician well-being and enhancing the quality of obesityrelated training in medical school, residency or continuing medical education,” Bleich added.

The study was written by Bleich, Wendy L. Bennett, Kimberly A. Gudzune and Lisa A. Cooper.

The research was supported in part by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the Health Resources and Services Administration.

4 30, 2011 2012 4 THE THE GAZETTE GAZETTE •• January August 15, P R O G R A M S

Dual programs in environmental engineering, business launched B y J u l i a n a W o o d a nd P at r i c k E r c o l a n o

Whiting School of Engineering and Carey Business School

T

he university’s Whiting School of Engineering, through Johns Hopkins Engineering for Professionals, and its Carey Business School are now offering dual master’s degree programs in environmental engineering and business administration.

“Over the last few years, it has become increasingly clear that environmental engineering professionals have a need for advanced business skills in the course of their daily work,” said Hedy Alavi, chair of EP’s Environmental Engineering, Science and Management program and a Carey Business School alumnus. “This new partnership

between the two divisions allows students to learn and apply complex concepts in both environmental engineering and business.”

Students may pursue a master of science in environmental planning and management, a master of science in environmental engineering and science, or a master of environmental engineering within EP, each combining with an MBA within the Carey Business School. They may take courses in the two schools simultaneously or sequentially. Graduates will receive two degrees, one from each school.

Registration for the dual degree programs is currently open for spring.

Phillip H. Phan, interim dean of the Carey Business School, said, “Across higher education, we’re seeing more dual degree graduate programs that include an MBA. I believe this reflects the recognition across

multiple disciplines—medicine, the arts, law, education and many others—that a solid grounding in business is essential to success in a marketplace that becomes more global and more challenging by the day. These new dual programs from the Whiting School of Engineering and the Carey Business School will provide students with the opportunity to combine skills from two distinct disciplines in a way that will place them at a great advantage when they graduate.”

Applicants must meet the admissions requirements of both the Whiting School’s EP program and the Carey Business School.

As part of the dual program structure, students will be able to complete both master’s degrees in less time than it would take to complete them as separate programs.

For the environmental engineering degree, students will be able to count two EP course

equivalents of academic credit from the Carey MBA toward the 10-course EP degree requirements. For the MBA degree, students will be able to count the academic equivalent of 12 credits from the EP program toward the Carey 54-credit Professional MBA program.

Students will attain the two degrees by completing 66 credits (28 courses) rather than the 84 (36 courses) that would be required when pursuing the two independently.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for our environmental engineering students to combine a first-class technical education with the business foundation that will keep them competitive in their careers for many years to come,” said Dexter G. Smith, associate dean of engineering for the EP program.

For more information about the dual degree programs, call 800-548-3647 or go to ep.jhu .edu.

Researchers slow progression of Huntington’s in mouse models

W

orking with genetically engineered mice, Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered that a gene linked to slowing the aging process in cells also appears to dramatically delay the onset of Huntington’s disease and slow the progression of the relentless neurodegenerative disorder.

Huntington’s disease in humans is a rare, fatal disorder caused by a mutation in a single gene and marked by progressive brain damage. Symptoms, which typically first appear in midlife, include jerky twitchlike movements, coordination troubles, psychiatric disorders and dementia. Although the gene responsible for Huntington’s was identified in 1993, much is still unknown about

SPECIAL OFFER

ONE BEDROOMS FROM $950 MONTHLY

S

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.

• University Parkway at West 39th Street • Studio, One & Two Bedroom Apartments • Daily & Monthly Furnished Suites • 24-Hour Front Desk

• Family Owned & Managed

LEASING CENTER OPEN MONDAY – SATURDAY

Call or stop by for more information

410-243-1216 W EST 39 TH S TREET B A LT I M O R E , MD 21210 105

410-243-1216

B ROADVIEW A PARTMENTS . COM

the biology of the disease. There is no cure, and there are no effective treatments.

In studying two separate mouse models of Huntington’s disease, or HD, the Johns Hopkins team found that mice bred with HD and a greater than usual amount of the enzyme whose blueprint is carried by the SIRT1 gene had improved motor function and reduced brain atrophy. Other studies have suggested SIRT1 has anti-aging and anti-inflammatory properties that scientists are only beginning to understand.

“Our research opens new avenues in the fight against HD, suggesting that if we target SIRT1, we may be able to find drugs that offer help to patients for whom we currently have really nothing that works,” said Wenzhen Duan, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

A report on the findings by Duan and her international team is published online in Nature Medicine.

In previous work with HD mice, Duan and her colleagues found that calorie restriction (reducing calories by about 30 per-

cent through alternate-day feeding) slowed the disease progression and extended life­ span. SIRT1 activity was associated with the increased longevity, owing to its ability to reduce hyperglycemia and improve glucose tolerance while mitigating metabolic problems in the animals. That experience with SIRT1 and HD mice led Duan to look more closely at the possible connection between the enzyme and the mutation in the huntingtin gene, HTT, which causes HD. The mutation results in the production of an abnormal and toxic version of the huntingtin protein.

Although HTT is expressed all over the body, the disease does its characteristic damage in the part of the brain that controls movement, most notably in the medium spiny neurons. Duan and her colleagues have determined that SIRT1 preserves the function of these medium spiny neurons and that extra SIRT1 seems to prevent a decline in levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which acts as nutrition for brain cells. People with HD tend to have low levels of BDNF. People with a family history of Huntington’s disease can be tested for the gene that

causes it long before the onset of symptoms, but many choose not to be tested, Duan says, because nothing can be done to prevent or treat the symptoms.

The research was supported by the Hereditary Disease Foundation, CHDI, the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Aging Intramural Research Program.

Other Johns Hopkins researchers involved in the study are Mali Jiang, Jiawei Wang, Jinrong Fu, Lan Xiang, Qi Peng, Zhipeng Hou, Nicolas Arbez, Shanshan Zhu, Katherine Sommers, Jennifer Qian, Jiangyang Zhang, Susumu Mori, Kellie L.K. Tamashiro, Susan Aja, Timothy H. Moran and Christopher A. Ross.

—Stephanie Desmon

Liver

licized, and since then, live liver donation may have been perceived as more dangerous than it actually is, Segev says. Now, he says, only 200 to 300 of these surgeries are performed annually, compared to 6,000 live kidney donations.

More than 16,000 people are currently on the waiting list for a liver transplant in the United States, while only around 6,000 livers from deceased donors are available.

“For many [patients], the risk of dying on the waiting list is higher than the chance of getting a deceased donor transplant,” Segev said. “For the right patients, with the right needs and the right donors, live donor transplantation can be the best treatment option, and this study reassures us that the risk of a catastrophic complication remains low.”

To determine the safety of live liver donation, Segev and his colleagues combed data from all 4,111 donors in the United States between April 1994 and March 2011, and followed patients for an average of 7.6 years. Over that period, there were seven donor deaths in the 90 days following surgery, but the researchers say that the long-term survival rate for donors was equal overall to the long-term survival of live kidney donors and a healthy control group culled from the National Health and Nutrition Survey.

Although the rate of live liver donor death was relatively low, Segev says that it is still five times that of the risk of death for live kidney donors. A study by Segev published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in March 2010 found that the rate of death in live kidney donation in the United States is 3.1 in 10,000. However,

kidney donation is a simpler process, Segev notes. The operation itself is less complicated, and kidney donors are left with one completely intact healthy kidney, which is typically able to compensate for the function of the one removed. By contrast, if a donor does not have enough healthy liver remaining after donation, he or she may not have enough liver function to get through the regeneration process, and might actually need a transplant to survive.

Segev says that he was particularly interested in studying the outcomes for donors because most of those who offer to give up part of an organ come to the process very healthy. “The ideal risk of death from donating an organ is zero, and we work as hard as we can to seek that ideal,” said Segev, director of clinical research in Transplant Surgery at Johns Hopkins. “But in these serious, major operations, it is unlikely the risk will ever be zero.”

Other Johns Hopkins researchers involved in the study are Abimereki D. Muzaale, Nabil N. Dagher and Robert A. Montgomery. G

Continued from page 1 enough to perform its crucial roles in blood detoxification, digestion and metabolism.

The regenerative ability also means that donors can survive well until theirs, too, regrow.

A decade ago, surgeons across the United States performed an estimated 500 live liver transplants a year. In 2002, however, the death of a live liver donor was highly pub-

‘Federal Foodies’ exhibition opens at Homewood Museum

C

harles Carroll Jr. took great pride and pleasure in creating a beautiful and productive setting for his Federal-era summer house, which is now the university’s Homewood Museum. Fields, gardens and orchards were set amid the property’s 130 picturesque acres.

A new exhibition called Federal Foodies, opening Friday, Feb. 3, examines this intersection of house and landscape by taking a closer look at food, farming and festivity in early Baltimore. From gardening and farming practices to how foods were preserved, prepared and presented, this student-curated focus exhibition offers new insights into farm-to-table living, 19th-century style.

Federal Foodies is on view at the museum Tuesday to Sunday through April 29. It is free with guided museum tour admission or $3 exhibition only.

Related website Wenzhen Duan:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ psychiatry/expert_team/faculty/ D/Duan.html

Related websites Dorry Segev:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ doctors/results/directory/ profile/0008001/dorry-segev Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Transplant Center:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ transplant

January 30, 2012 • THE GAZETTE

5

Applied Physics Lab shapes future explosive detection system B y G i n a E ll r i c h

Applied Physics Laboratory

A

PL is working with the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate to combat terrorism by developing requirements for explosive detection systems for subways and other modes of mass transit. The goal is to prevent in the United States tragedies like the 2005 London subway bomb attacks that killed 52 people and injured 700 mass transit passengers.

A team from APL’s Homeland Protection Business Area’s Transportation Security Systems Program is leading an effort to develop tools that increase security for subway and light rail passengers, starting with research of more than 130 train stations nationwide over the past year. This group of scientists, engineers and mathematicians aims to characterize passenger flow, physical constraints and environmental parameters at these locations and develop requirements that DHS

will use to develop state-of-the-art detection systems.

“We are tackling the very complex problem of securing the mass transit environment to ultimately prevent terrorist attacks, and we began by studying subway systems in Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Baltimore,” said Emily Stoll, Transportation Security Systems Program manager. “Our project will eventually expand to other surface transportation venues such as ferry boats and buses.”

Securing the mass transit environment is a challenge. Subways for example, are designed to be open and allow people to move freely from street level to the railcars below. “In some of our country’s larger mass transit systems, you see hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of passengers in a given day,” said Jacob Boon, Transportation Security Systems Program project manager.

“Not only do you have many people moving through a confined space very quickly, but subway stations typically have different access points. The challenge is developing

technology that fits well and works effectively within that environment.”

Many security systems were developed for the aviation industry after 9/11, but they aren’t easily transferred to the masstransit environment. Big reasons for this are staffing and passenger flow. Baggage X-rays and other devices in use at airport checkpoints require at least one operator; mass transit systems don’t have the resources for necessary staff yet must deal with much higher passenger flow. “We are looking for automated ways that don’t require a human operator to make the detections,” Stoll said.

To establish the requirements for such technologies, APL is taking measurements in the field to determine how passengers flow through a given area.

An APL-developed modeling and simulation component of the project, called STRATAM (for Surface Transportation Technology Assessment Model), simulates the process of people moving through a transit system and helps translate raw measurements into performance requirements

for sensors. Using this model, DHS can determine how much of a passenger load a given sensor can handle and how fast it must scan a crowd moving through a transportation system. STRATAM also enables APL to optimize the placement of sensors within a station and explore layered detection concepts.

Jose Latimer, Homeland Protection Business Area executive, said that the Laboratory’s integrated systems engineering approach brings all of the data and information together for the sponsor, allowing APL to make recommendations and DHS to make sound investments in technologies that increase mass transit security.

“The [Transportation Security Systems] Program is a great example of how APL expertise in systems engineering and modeling and simulation can combine to support our sponsors with reliable information,” he said. “As we tackle this challenging problem, we are playing a significant role developing the right technology to enhance our national security.”

Breast cancer surgery preserves artery for future heart surgery

By Jim Schnabel

Johns Hopkins Medicine

D

octors at Johns Hopkins have shown that during an increasingly popular type of breast-reconstruction surgery they can safely preserve the internal mammary artery, in case it is needed for future cardiac surgery.

“Some breast-reconstruction patients might need a cardiac bypass in the future, so we implemented and studied a new technique that spares this artery used for that purpose,” said Gedge D. Rosson, an associate professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and lead researcher on the new report, which appears in the October issue of the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

The chance that any woman will need cardiac bypass surgery during her lifetime is low.

But radiation therapy is sometimes required after mastectomy, and radiation damage to heart vessels is known to increase heart disease risk. Studies suggest that fatal cardiac events may be as much as two times more likely in women who have had radiotherapy for breast cancer on the left side, closest to the heart. “All else being equal, it’s better to leave this artery available, just in case,” Rosson said.

During breast-reconstruction surgeries, doctors often effectively perform a “tummy tuck” type of operation and use the removed flap of abdominal skin and fat to reconstruct a breast lost to mastectomy. They can attach the blood supply of the removed abdominal tissue to the chest wall by connecting it to the internal mammary artery, usually with an “end-to-end anastomosis,” in which most

of the internal mammary artery is cut away and the new tissue is attached to its base.

However, the internal mammary artery is normally the first choice of cardiac surgeons when they need to bypass diseased or damaged arteries that nourish the heart, and its unavailability would leave patients with poorer options.

With a breast-reconstruction technique called “end-to-side anastomosis,” a surgeon connects the stump of the abdominal artery contained in the transplanted abdominal tissue to the side of the existing internal mammary artery, eliminating the need to prune back the mammary artery.

To establish the safety of the technique, Rosson; John J. Apostolides, then chief surgical resident; and Michael Magarakis, then a research fellow, looked at records from the 15 end-to-side and 15 end-to-end procedures that Rosson performed from midFebruary to mid-October 2009. They found that the only significant difference between the two was that the end-to-side procedure required approximately 20 minutes more surgery time. This left the transplanted tissue without blood flow longer than the standard end-to-end procedure, but the total time was still within what surgeons consider acceptable limits, and all the end-to-side surgeries were successful.

“The idea was to see if we could do this without adding too much time to the surgery or making it too difficult, and that proved to be the case,” Rosson said.

Surgeons in the United States performed about 93,000 breast reconstructions during 2010, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Most of these surgeries involved the use of artificial implants, but

in about 20 percent of cases, surgeons rebuilt breasts using flaps of tissue cut from patients’ upper backs or abdomens.

In the most common of these patients’own-tissue procedures, muscle is removed from the donor site along with skin and fat.

But most patients prefer to keep their abdominal or upper back muscles intact, and a new procedure known as a DIEP (deep inferior epigastric perforator) flap spares the muscle while using only the abdominal skin and fat. In 2010, U.S. plastic surgeons performed about 5,000 DIEP flaps. Effectively, the procedure gives patients a “tummy tuck” and uses the excised tissue to reconstruct a breast.

“The new breast has a nice shape and it’s

soft and supple and feels natural,” Rosson said. “More and more plastic surgeons are doing the DIEP flap surgery because of its advantages.”

The end-to-side anastomosis simply adds a further advantage to the DIEP flap surgery by keeping the internal mammary artery available in case of future bypass surgery needs.

The artery is normally used for the most important bypass done in such procedures.

“It works better for longer, compared with the saphenous veins [taken from the leg] that are normally a cardiac surgeon’s second choice,” Rosson said.

No funding was provided for this research.

Looking for someplace... ...more custom fit for you?

Southern’s Apartment Locator Service can find that place for you.

And, it’s FREE! Because we own and manage 25,000 apartment homes in 70 communites in the Baltimore/Washington area, Southern Management can find you a great apartment at a fair price.

888.687.4519

southernmanagement.com

6 30, 2011 2012 6 THE THE GAZETTE GAZETTE •• January August 15,

January 30, 2012 • THE GAZETTE

7

Study: PARP drug sabotages DNA repair in pre-leukemic cells B y V a n e s s a W a s ta

Johns Hopkins Medicine

L

will kirk / homewoodphoto.jhu.edu

ooking for ways to halt the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells, scientists at Johns Hopkins have found that a new class of drugs, called PARP inhibitors, may block the ability of pre-leukemic cells to repair broken bits of their own DNA, causing these cells to self-destruct. Results

of their experiments, presented Dec. 12 at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology in San Diego, have already prompted clinical trials of the drugs in patients with aggressive pre-leukemic conditions, who have few treatment options.

The Johns Hopkins team analyzed the genomes of 144 patients with pre-leukemic conditions, collectively known as myeloproliferative disorders, and found deletions of several genes that control how cells repair

Visitors touch and rate 22 replicas of works in the Walters collection.

Walters Continued from page 1 this show, the fourth in a series of projects between the museum and Johns Hopkins.

“We’re challenging people to think about why physical contact with works of art can be so satisfying,” says Hsiao, whose research through the university’s Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute includes exploring many aspects of humans’ sense of touch. “In fact, as people browse the exhibition, we will be asking them to react to what they are seeing and feeling.”

But more on that in a moment.

The installation incorporates 12 works of art from the Walters collection, along with 22 replicas for visitors to touch and rate. It melds the research interests of Hsiao, who specializes in many facets of touch in his work in the Department of Neuroscience in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and that of Joaneath Spicer, curator of Renaissance and baroque art at The Walters, who studies the new taste in the Renaissance for collecting and commissioning small statuettes and other luxury goods that were satisfying to touch and handle.

But the special appeal of this exhibition lies in the opportunity to join in compara-

tive experiments with the statuettes (well, replicas of them, actually).

“We’ll be asking visitors to handle them and to tell us what sculptures they prefer, and to rate how they like sculptures that have been modified in their shape and texture. This exhibition allows us to dissect why some objects feel better than others,” Hsiao says.

Visitors will register these preferences, and other reactions, on Apple iPads, and will be able to see a dynamic display of their responses. This data will be used as part of both Hsiao’s and Spicer’s research on tactile aesthetics. G

Related websites Steven Hsiao:

neuroscience.jhu.edu/ StevenHsiao.php

Johns Hopkins Brain Science Institute:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ brainscience/

their DNA. Many DNA repair–related pathways and genes have been linked to both cancer development and interruption of that process.

One of the potential defects identified during Johns Hopkins’ genome scan occurred in the BRCA2 gene, best known for causing hereditary breast cancer and one among many genes in a pathway that regulates DNA repair processes. With mistakes in the BRCA2 gene, precancer and cancer cells must lean more heavily on other pathways to repair DNA in order to survive.

“To kill precancer and cancer cells, we have to disrupt the other DNA repair pathways that are keeping them alive,” said Michael McDevitt, an assistant professor of medicine and oncology at Johns Hopkins and co-leader of the study.

Some studies indicate that BRCA2mutated cells are sensitive to treatment with PARP inhibitors, drugs that block specific DNA-repair proteins. PARP, or poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase, inhibitors are being tested in early clinical trials at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere to treat breast and certain blood cancers.

To test PARP inhibitors’ therapeutic potential for pre-leukemias, McDevitt and his colleagues at the Mayo Clinic focused on one particular DNA repair pathway called homologous recombination. Some 15 samples of pre-leukemic cells were irradiated and then tested for their ability to form protein complexes, a first step to repairing the radiation-induced damage. Six of the 15 samples formed no protein complexes, a sign that the homologous recombination pathway was disrupted, and each of the six samples was three to five times more sensitive to PARP inhibitors than were normal cells.

Portions of pre-leukemic cells also were grown in culture and treated with PARP inhibitors to determine whether they could clump together and form colonies, a sign of viable cells. Fewer pre-leukemic cells treated

with PARP inhibitors were able to form colonies, an indication that the therapy may be effective for pre-leukemias.

“It’s important that PARP drugs target mainly cancer cells while sparing normal cells,” said Keith Pratz, an assistant professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins. “Most normal cells may not be affected by PARP inhibitors because they have more than one DNA repair pathway to rely on.”

Pratz and McDevitt are conducting clinical trials of PARP inhibitors in patients with aggressive myeloproliferative disorders.

“There may be a subset of people with myeloproliferative disorders who can benefit from PARP inhibitors, and we hope that further testing in patients may help define this,” Pratz said.

The outlook for patients with myeloproliferative disorders varies. “Some patients can do very well for a long time,” McDevitt said. Median survival of patients with a myeloproliferative disorder called myelofibrosis is reportedly five years. Survival times are far shorter—perhaps as short as 15 to 20 months—for many patients with chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, McDevitt says.

When a myeloproliferative disorder progresses to acute leukemia, most patients survive only a few months.

Patients with the disorders experience infections, high white blood cell counts and anemia. No curative treatments other than bone marrow transplants are available.

The clinical trials of PARP inhibitors at Johns Hopkins are funded by the National Cancer Institute.

In addition to McDevitt and Pratz, investigators who contributed to the research are Alison Moliterno, Weijie Poh, James Herman, Robert Dilley, B. Douglas Smith and Judith E. Karp, all of Johns Hopkins; Brian Koh, Anand Patel and Scott Kaufman, all of the Mayo Clinic; and Christine O’Keefe and Jaroslaw Maciejewski, both of the Cleveland Clinic.

ORI S S E E T H N T O gs M E R urroundin O S e r M u I c e T BAL nriching the Mind in S E

!

CATIONS TWO LO Canton Potomac Street 1001 S. oint Locust Pst Fort Avenue 1530 Ea

EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN 18 MONTHS – 6 YEARS AND CHILDC ARE

Exhibition at The Walters Art Museum:

thewalters.org/eventscalendar/ eventdetails.aspx?e=2207

The East Baltimore Community School (EBCS)* is accepting K-Grade 4 applications for the fall 2012.

Act now - Application deadline is April 1, 2012 - spots are limited!

Stop by the EBCS table ■ February 7, 2012 Armstrong Building, First floor Lobby ■ Noon - 1:30 p.m.

Want a tour of the school?

Thursday, February 16 from 9 a.m.-11 a.m.

We have a bus that will take you from the Armstrong Building to EBCS. Reservations required for bus tour, contact Sarah Tennyson at Tennyson@jhu.edu

For more information – education.jhu.edu/ebcs *The proposed name for the new campus K-8 facility is “Elmer A. Henderson: A Johns Hopkins Partnership School” EBCS is a unique partnership between the Johns Hopkins University, Morgan State University, the EBCS school board, and the Baltimore City Public Schools

n for childre E OFFER W H AT W curriculum and daycare ntessori

• Mo years. onths – 6 ctical life, ages 18 m reas of pra a e d lu culture c in math and lum will , u e g ic a rr u u g C n • nt, la evelopme sensorial d guage nd indoor d secon lan outdoor a , a a s g a o y h is g n in • Spa ent, includ nd Movem and • Music a with paints n o ti ta n s e a rim play are ding expe rafts, inclu c d n a s rt • A vities aterials water acti d n a various m lunch d n a s ening, snack, hot g rd a in g , rn g o in m k of • Coo onsisting us meals c io it tr u N • achers ack certified te ernoon sn h it w t n e and an aft environm nurturing • Loving,

N PERATIO O F O S pm HOUR :30/6:00 ble) 5 – m a 0 a 7:3 avail ed hours (extend

7449 443-980om hotmail.c tbmedu@

thebaltimoremontessori.com

8 30, 2011 2012 8 THE THE GAZETTE GAZETTE •• January August 15,

January 30, 2012 • THE GAZETTE

9

Popular colorectal cancer drug may cause permanent damage Skin biopsies detect nerve degeneration that may be permanent or worsen B y C h r i s t e n B r o wnl e e

Johns Hopkins Medicine

O

xaliplatin, a platinum-based anticancer drug that’s made enormous headway in recent years against colorectal cancer, appears to cause nerve damage that may be permanent and worsens even months after treatment ends.

The chemotherapy side effect, described

by Johns Hopkins researchers in the September issue of Neurology, was discovered in what is believed to be the first effort to track oxaliplatin-based nerve damage through relatively cheap and easy punch skin biopsies.

The Johns Hopkins investigators emphasize that the drug therapy clearly improves length of survival in advanced cancer by months to years, and that the goal of their new study is to find ways of preventing or slowing the damage through nerve-protective therapies identified through simple skin testing.

Many patients who take oxaliplatin report bothersome neurological side effects, including pain in the hands and feet and a numbness or tingling in the throat that

affects swallowing, according to study leader Michael Polydefkis, an associate professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the EMG Laboratory and Cutaneous Nerve Laboratory at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. Although these symptoms develop over time in the majority of patients, some report neuropathies as early as when the drug is first infused.

To get a better sense of how oxaliplatin affects nerve cells, Polydefkis and his colleagues recruited eight cancer patients about to begin oxaliplatin treatment at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. All had been diagnosed with advanced colon cancer.

Before their first oxaliplatin infusion, each patient underwent a comprehensive neurological examination, including nerve conduction testing, a clinical exam to look for signs of nerve damage, and a punch biopsy that removed tiny (3-millimeter diameter) portions of skin near their knees and ankles.

Once oxaliplatin treatment began, consisting of infusions over two days once every two weeks for 12 cycles, the researchers performed the same tests after 30, 90 and 180 days. Another 180 days after they finished with treatment, the patients received one final exam.

Test results showed that each of the patients’ nerve function and neuropathy symptoms worsened over time, and that results from the punch skin biopsies neatly

mirrored the side-effect arc. Using a microscope, the researchers saw that nerve cells’ long extensions, called axons, degenerated over the course of oxaliplatin therapy. This progression persisted after treatment stopped.

Even 180 days after their last doses, seven of the eight patients’ axons continued to wither.

“This drug has rapidly become the standard of care for people with advanced colon cancer, but we really knew little about how oxaliplatin affects nerves over time,” he said.

“With people living longer lives on oxaliplatin, it’s important to know more about these neurological side effects so patients and their physicians can make educated choices on how this drug is used, and perhaps suggest ways to limit the damage.”

The new study strongly suggests that punch skin biopsies could be an easy and inexpensive way to follow nerve cell degeneration, a crucial prerequisite for testing the effectiveness of drugs currently in development to trace, prevent or slow nerve damage.

“Skin biopsies can be done pretty easily, uniformly and cheaply anywhere, including hospitals, doctors’ offices and clinics, and those places can have the tissue sent to Hopkins for analysis,” Polydefkis said. “Highquality neurological testing isn’t nearly as easy or economical to do, so it’s possible that the biopsies could play a pivotal role in bringing neuroprotective drugs to fruition.”

Other Johns Hopkins researchers who participated in this study are Ahmet Z.

Burakgazi, Wells Messersmith, Dhananjay Vaidya, Peter Hauer and Ahmet Hoke.

Related websites Michael Polydefkis:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ neurology_neurosurgery/experts/ profiles/team_member_profile/ 8F9C6CF190557439AE BE1CC526273551/Michael_ Polydefkis www.hopkinsbayview.org/ neurology/diabeticneuropathy/ facultystaff.html Peripheral Nerve Center at Johns Hopkins:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ neurology_neurosurgery/specialty_ areas/peripheral_nerve Cutaneous Nerve Laboratory at Johns Hopkins:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ neurology_neurosurgery/specialty_ areas/cutaneous_nerve_lab Neurology and Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ neurology_neurosurgery

Schizophrenia: Small genetic changes pose risk for disease

C

arrying both of two different genes with single DNA letter changes may increase the risk of developing schizophrenia, Johns Hopkins researchers reported in the Nov. 16 issue of Neuron.

Causes for psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia and autism have been difficult to pinpoint because they may be triggered by many small genetic changes that alone may be insufficient but in the right combination may cause disease.

Drastic DNA rearrangements in the genetic letters of the DISC1 gene are known to cause schizophrenia and other major mental disorders; however, these large changes are rare and do not apply to the majority of people with schizophrenia. Nevertheless, DISC1 is thought to be an entry point for study into the cause of the disease, and defects in DISC1 combined with defects in other genes may contribute to disease.

“We studied the function of two proteins known to interact, FEZ1 and DISC1, in cells and animal models, which suggested that these proteins work together in adult brain development,” said Guo-li Ming, a professor of neurology and neuroscience in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and

a member of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering. “When we looked at the human genetic sequences of DISC1 and FEZ1, we found that a combination of small DNA changes raises risk for schizophrenia.”

To determine if FEZ1 and DISC1 work together in adult brain development, the researchers used molecular biology techniques to reduce the amount of FEZ1 in the newborn neurons in mouse adult hippocampus, then examined the cells under a microscope. The neurons with less FEZ1 looked similar to cells with less DISC1; they were larger and had longer feelers, which are used to reach out and communicate with other

Related websites Guo-li Ming:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/institute_ cell_engineering/experts/guo_ming.html Hongjun Song:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ institute_cell_engineering/experts/ hongjun_song.html

neurons nearby. The researchers proposed that these proteins may be working together in neurons to control cell size and feeler length, and that disruption in this process may lead to psychiatric diseases.

Then, the researchers checked existing cases of schizophrenia to see if combinations of single-letter DNA changes in DISC1 and FEZ1 made people more susceptible to the disease. The researchers examined the Genetic Association Information Network, a large patient database that was created by the National Institutes of Health to identify genome-associated diseases. Using statistical approaches, the Institute for Cell Engineering:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ institute_cell_engineering/index .html Neuroregeneration Program at ICE:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/institute_ cell_engineering/research_programs/ neuroregeneration.html

researchers examined four different singleletter DNA changes in the FEZ1 sequence from 1,351 schizophrenia cases and 1,378 healthy people. Single-letter DNA changes in FEZ1 alone did not contribute to schizophrenia risk. However, when the researchers looked at these four different FEZ1 DNA letter changes in combination with a DISC1 single DNA letter change already known to slightly increase schizophrenia risk, they found that one particular FEZ1 DNA change along with the DISC1 change significantly increased the risk of schizophrenia by two and a half times.

“By continuing to examine interactions of key genes involved with disease in cells and correlating the results with patient databases, we can begin to unravel the genetic contributions of psychiatric disorders that previously were a mystery to us,” said Hongjun Song, a professor of neurology in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and director of the Stem Cell Program at the Institute for Cell Engineering. “Finding sets of proteins, like FEZ1 and DISC1, that synergistically work together to cause disease will also give us new drug targets to develop new therapies.”

—Vanessa McMains

Nursing research article is editor’s pick in AHA journal

A

n article by Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing researchers was selected as an editor’s pick in a recent issue of the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. The study, “Community Outreach and Cardiovascular Health (COACH) Trial: A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Nurse Practitioner/ Community Health Worker Cardiovascular Disease Risk Reduction in Urban Community Health Centers,” proves that direct intervention by nurses with patients who have cardiovascular disease has a positive effect on improving cardiovascular care in underserved populations.

Each year, approximately 831,000 Americans die of cardiovascular disease. Despite well-publicized guidelines on the appropriate management of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, the implementation of risk-reducing practices remains poor. The

COACH trial, funded by the National Institutes of Health, was led by Jerilyn Allen, the school’s associate dean for research and the M. Adelaide Nutting Professor in the Department of Acute and Chronic Care, and included fellow Johns Hopkins researchers Cheryl Dennison Himmelfarb, Sarah Szanton, Martha N. Hill and Mary Donnelly-Strozzo.

The trial randomly assigned 525 patients with documented cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol and hypertension into two groups; 261 were assigned to a nurse practitioner/community health worker and 264 to an enhanced usual care group. Participants for the trial were selected between July 2006 and July 2009 from two community health centers in Baltimore.

Those who were assigned to the nurse practitioner/community health worker group focused on lifestyle changes based on behavioral interventions. These included

adherence to medications and appointments with their health care providers.

The team also integrated lifestyle modifications, including reminders, logs, pill organizers, alarm clocks or any other method that would assist the patient in following the complex regimens. A low-literacy wellness guide also was developed for the study as a behavioral tool and included a log for lab results, therapeutic goals for weight, blood pressure, lipids and glycated hemoglobin (for diabetic patients) and customized tips for taking medication, as well as for healthy eating, increased physical activity and smoking cessation.

After 12 months, participants who received care from the nurse-led team had significantly greater reductions in total cholesterol (20 mg/dL), bad LDL cholesterol (16 mg/dL) and triglycerides (16 mg/dL).

Patients in the nurse-led group also experienced an average systolic blood pressure

decrease of 6 mm Hg, a diastolic blood pressure reduction of 3 mm Hg, and a half percent decrease in HbA1c, a test that measures sugar in the blood.

Researchers also found that the patients in the group that saw nurse practitioners had an improved perception of the quality of their chronic illness care, leading them to conclude that the individualized regimens can be effective for high-risk patients.

“Our results prove the value of nurse intervention when it comes to an individual’s health, and add to the collective research that has already been done in cardiovascular care,” Allen said. “Although more research needs to be conducted, this is a major step toward replicating similar community intervention in other urban areas, which in turn will help improve cardiovascular health across the country.”

—Jonathan Eichberger

10 30, 2011 2012 10 THE THE GAZETTE GAZETTE •• January August 15, H U M A N

R E S O U R C E S

Notices

Hot Jobs

tinuing Education session has openings for

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.

Office of Human Resources Wyman Park Building, Suite W600 410-516-7196 The Center for Talented Youth seeks students of the highest academic ability through its talent search and offers them challenging educational opportunities that develop the intellect, encourage achievement and nurture social development. CTY, whose offices are located on the Mount Washington campus, is now looking for people who have experience working with programs for academically advanced young people (grades 3 to 12). For detailed job descriptions and to apply, go to jobs.jhu.edu.

CTY Assistant Program Manager (CTYOnline Mathematics) Curriculum Specialist (Math) CTY Program Manager (CTYOnline Language Arts) Assistant Director, Information Technology CTY Assistant Program Manager (Academic Summer Programs) Rural Connections Program Director

School of Medicine Office of Human Resources 98 N. Broadway, Suite 300 410-955-2990 The School of Medicine has several administrative positions available and is seeking candidates with excellent computer, communication and organizational skills. For detailed job descriptions and to apply, go to jobs.jhu.edu.

50333 50346 50522 50550

Study explores autism diagnosis change, co-occurring conditions

I

Homewood

Executive Assistant Administrative Secretary Administrative Coordinator Senior Administrative Coordinator

Schools of Public Health and Nursing Office of Human Resources 2021 E. Monument St. 410-955-3006

J A N .

Senior Programmer Analyst Senior Research Subjects Specialist Senior Research Program Coordinator Research Nurse Senior Research Nurse Senior Research Program Supervisor Research Service Analyst Administrative Manager Senior Research Program Coordinator II

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 RT M E N T L I V I N G I N

R O L A N D PA R K

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

410-243-1216

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

tively. Across all age groups, children with a current ASD diagnosis were more likely to have at least two co-occurring conditions, compared to children who no longer had the diagnosis.

Co-occurring conditions of ASD varied by age. Among the youngest children, those with a current ASD diagnosis were more likely to have a current moderate/severe developmental delay and current moderate/severe learning disability compared to children who no longer had the diagnosis.

In children ages 6 to 11, those with current ASD had past speech problems as well as current moderate/severe anxiety disorders, compared to children who no longer had the diagnosis. Finally, in the adolescent group, those with ASD were more likely to have current moderate/severe speech problems and current seizures compared to children who no longer had the diagnosis.

“Clinicians working with children with ASD need to recognize that certain coexisting conditions of autism differentiate children who continue having the diagnosis from children who no longer have the diagnosis,” said Lee, the senior author and a psychiatric epidemiologist at the Bloomberg School. “Besides the core symptoms of autism, the clinicians would need to evaluate the child on these conditions.”

The message is the same for parents.

“They should have their child evaluated for possible co-existing conditions in addition to core symptoms of ASD to make sure an ASD diagnosis is properly determined. That way, a more appropriate intervention for the child can be planned as early as possible,” Lee added.

—Tim Parsons

n a new Pediatrics article, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health examined the relationship between the co-occurring conditions in children with autism spectrum disorders, and whether the children’s ASD diagnosis remained stable or changed.

The study was published online Jan. 23 and will appear in the February edition of Pediatrics. The authors, Heather Close, LiChing Lee and Christopher N. Kaufmann, all of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; and Andrew W. Zimmerman, of Massachusetts General Hospital for Children, found that the type and number of co-occurring conditions vary by children’s age. These conditions include anxiety, depression, developmental delay, speech problems and seizures.

“Our study found that children with a current ASD diagnosis are more likely to have co-occurring conditions compared to children who no longer have an ASD diagnosis,” said Close, the study’s lead author.

The study analyzed data of parentreported ASD diagnoses from 1,366 children in the National Survey of Children’s Health 2007 dataset by three age groups: young children (3 to 5 years), children (6 to 11 years) and adolescents (12 to 17 years). In the survey, parents of children in each age group were asked whether their child had a current ASD diagnosis, or had received the diagnosis in the past but no longer has the diagnosis.

The percentage of children found to have an ASD diagnosis change were 25 percent, 33 percent and 35 percent for young children, children and adolescents, respec-

The Bloomberg School of Public Health is seeking skilled applicants for several part- and full-time positions. For detailed job descriptions and to apply, go to jobs.jhu.edu.

50518 50321 50994 50962 50615 50715 50717 50783 51033

B O A R D

couples and individuals who want to learn Cuban-style salsa. Classes will take place from 7 to 8 p.m. on Mondays at Peabody’s downtown campus. Tuition is $50, with a special rate for Hopkins and Peabody Conservatory students. For more information, call 410-234-4630.

Peabody Preparatory Cuban Salsa Classes — This 10-week Adult and Con-

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

51079 51088 50412 50754 50991 51087

B U L L E T I N

3 0

–

F E B .

6

Calendar Continued from page 12 Montreal. 709 Traylor. EB (Videoconferenced to 110 Clark. HW )

Sponsored by Johns Hopkins University Museums. Free to Homewood Museum members and the Hopkins community; please bring photo ID. Guest tickets may be purchased at Homewood Museum for $10. Homewood Museum. HW

S P E C I AL E V E N T S

Black History Month Opening Ceremony with an address by the 2012 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Convocation speaker Cedric Jennings, subject of Ron Suskind’s book A Hope in the Unseen. (See photo, p. 12.)

Sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Men of Color Hopkins Alliance. For more information, call 410-516-8730. Charles Commons Ballroom. HW Wed., Feb. 1, 5:30 p.m.

First Look preview reception for the exhibition Federal Foodies: From Farm to Table in Early Baltimore, curated by students from the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and MICA. (See story, p. 4.) This special preview features curators’ remarks and a wine and hors d’oeuvres reception.

Thurs., Feb. 2, 5 to 7 p.m.

W OR K S H O P S The Center for Educational Resources sponsors a series of workshops on the

Blackboard 9.1 interface. The training is open to all faculty, staff and TAs in full-time KSAS or WSE programs who have administrative responsibilities in a Blackboard course. To register, go to www.bb.cer.jhu.edu. Garrett Room, MSE Library. HW •

Mon., Jan. 30, 10 a.m. to noon.

•

Tues., Jan. 31, 10 a.m. to noon.

•

Wed., Feb. 1, 10 a.m. to noon.

“Getting Started With Blackboard.”

“Blackboard Communication and Collaboration.”

“Assessing Student Knowledge and Managing Grades in Blackboard.”

January 30, 2012 • THE GAZETTE

Classifieds APARTMENTS/HOUSES FOR RENT

Brewers Hill, rehabbed 2BR, 2.5BA TH, gourmet kitchen, fin’d bsmt, deck, no pets, avail Feb 1. $1,850/mo. 410-303-1214 or hudsonstreetrental@hotmail.com.

Canton/Fells Point (603 S Patterson Park Ave), 2BR, 2.5BA renov’d RH, 3 levels, 1,500 sq ft, CAC, hdwd flrs, expos’d brick, extra rms, laundry, rooftop deck, walk to park. $1,650/mo. fionalydon@hotmail.com.

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

Ellicott City, 2BR apt in Centennial schools/Burleigh Manor district, 2 full BAs, 1,100 sq ft, excel location, low utility bill. $1,300/mo. Krishanu, 410-706-7500 (day) or ellicott2012@gmail.com.

Essex, 2BR, 1BA condo in water view, laundry in unit, to own. $875/mo (unfurn’d) (furn’d). 410-322-2168 or yahoo.com.

secure bldg, rent or rent or $925/mo julainepw@

Fells Point, spacious 2BR, 1BA condo in PS25 building in the heart of the city, 14-ft ceilings, hdwd flrs, granite counters, stainless steel appls, mins to Hopkins shuttle stop, pets welcome. $1,698/mo. 410-952-8045.

Glen Burnie, studio apt w/own laundry (W/D), BA, kitchenette, 12 mi to campus, must be a car owner. 443-799-7530.

Hamilton Ave (at Walther), 2BR, 1BA apt, 1st flr. $750/mo. 301-538-3819.

Harbor East, lg, luxury 1BR, walking distance to Carey Business School, 3-month lease, avail March 1. $2,136/mo incl prkng.

917-951-1440.

Ocean City (137th St), 3BR, 2BA condo, steps from beach, lg pool, 2 prkng spaces, short walk to restaurants and entertainment, call now for prime wks. 410-544-2814.

Ocean City (144th St), 5BR semi-detached house on ocean block, call for wkly rates. 410821-6446, rme@nqgrg.com or community .webshots.com/user/easushko (for pics).

Owings Mills Newtown, 2BR, 2BA condo on the 3rd flr. $1,300/mo. 609-647-9386 or wwotorson@verizon.net.

Patterson Park/Highlandtown, 3BR, 1.5BA RH, huge kitchen w/new stainless steel appls, hdwd flrs, updated master BA, backyd w/privacy fence, CAC, blks to shuttle stop, no pets allowed, refs req’d. $1,400/mo. 410218-4708 or ky_helfrich@hotmail.com.

Remington, 2BR and 1 full BA, located off 28th St at Miles Ave. $800/mo + utils. 443449-4883.

Remington (29th St), 2BR, 1BA TH w/ kitchen, living rm, bsmt, fenced yd, no pets/no smokers, 5-min walk to Homewood campus. $800/mo + utils. 443-783-5666 or lilly7772011@gmail.com.

Villages of Homeland, 1BR apt in gated community, CAC, laundry rm on same flr, walk-in closets, patio, pool, exercise rm, prkng, avail Feb 1. $850/mo incl heat. 410532-9492.

Beech Ave. adj. to JHU!

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

M A R K E T P L A C E

White Marsh, 2BR condo w/2 full BAs, renov’d kitchen, laundry, prkng. $1,460/mo + utils. Bob, 410-299-8007.

Fabulous 5BR executive home avail, furn’d/ unfurn’d, rent or rent to own, convenient to Baltimore. 410-259-8879.

2BR, 1.5BA house, kitchen, living rm, dining rm, fin’d bsmt, lg yd w/big grill. $1,400/ mo. 410-800-8141.

3BR, 2BA ground/bsmt apt, eat-in kitchen, living rm, priv entrance w/prkng, nr light rail, no pets/no smoking. gretagolden@ yahoo.com.

3BR, 2BA brick RH, $50 off w/1-yr lease (by Feb 15), background check req’d. 202486-5418.

wireless. 917-647-7779 or mari.grotz@gmail .com.

Lg master suite (off Light St) in safe neighborhood, great walkability, 13' x 18', shared BA, big closet, roofdeck, backyd. $800/mo. sagaetani@loyola.edu.

F nonsmoker wanted for amazing rm in 3BR Patterson Park house, 11.5" x 12", roomy closet, own patio. 202-290-4252 or ramboethiopia@gmail.com.

CARS FOR SALE

’07 VW Passat, black, leather, DVD, Navi, CD, MP3, clean, up-to-date on maintenance, 115K mi (highway). $9,500. 804504-1202 or louis.alexjr@gmail.com. ’89 Chevy Silverado pickup, 4x4, rebuilt motor, new tires. $2,400. John, 443-7507750.

ITEMS FOR SALE HOUSES FOR SALE

Fells Point (300 blk S Durham St), 3 stories, new front/rear masonry work, nice yd, nr JHH. $175,000. Dorothy, 410-419-3902.

Gardenville, 3BR, 1.25BA RH, new kitchen and BA, CAC, hdwd flrs, fenced, maintenance-free yd w/carport, club bsmt w/cedar closet, quiet neighborhood. $120,000. 443610-0236 or tziporachai@juno.com.

Greenway, Manhattan-style efficiency condo in owner-occupied, elegant and secure bldg, steps from Homewood campus. $89,500 (reduced). 443-414-6282.

Owings Mills New Town, 2BR condo nr metro station. $74,900. www.4409silverbrook.info.

ROOMMATES WANTED

Share 3BR, 1.5BA house in Belair/Edison community, W/D, 10 mins from E Baltimore campus. $600/mo incl utils, wireless Internet. 443-226-6497 or expoblk@yahoo.com.

Nonsmoker wanted for furn’d 700 sq ft BR in 3BR house in Cedonia owned by young F prof’l, bright, 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.

F nonsmoker wanted for 1BR in 2BR W University Pkwy apt, share w/Hopkins alumna, AC, heat, hot water, nr campus, no pets. $540/mo + 1/2 elec. gwxts5@gmail.com.

F wanted to share lg apt in Towson area, priv BR w/full BA, use of W/D, common areas, pool, Dish TV/Internet, quiet, upscale area. $725/mo incl utils. 443-465-7011 or junedameron@gmail.com.

Share 2BR, 1BA waterfront apt in Baltimore County, W/D, 12 mi to E Baltimore campus. $900/mo ($450/ea) + sec dep + heat and AC. rick1432@comcast.net.

F nonsmoker bedspacer wanted to share condo in Washington Hill (98 N Broadway) w/grad student, adjacent to Church Professional Building, walk to JHH/shuttle. $450/ mo + utils. retzcare@yahoo.com.

Lg BR avail in Fells Point 3BR apt (918 S Wolfe St), good windows, great neighborhood, historic house next to Red Star restaurant. $800/mo + share of utils, cable,

HICKORY HEIGHTS WYMAN COURT Just Renovated! A lovely hilltop setting

11

Pillow-top mattresses, 1 queen and 1 king, almost new, very clean. $125/ea. 410-4193902.

Hotpoint refrigerator/freezer, white, 18 cu ft, w/automatic icemaker and defrost, 4 yrs old, buyer picks up. $225. 443-803-7401 or beaadd@aol.com. iPod nano 8G, 6th generation, black w/clip, brand new, never used, shake shuffle, FM transmitter, touch display, many other features. Best offer. grogan.family@hotmail.com.

Beautiful dining rm table w/4 chairs, from smoke-free and pet-free home. $200. 410493-6909.

Oil-filled heaters (3), inkjet printer, portable canvas chair, sand beach chairs (2), keyboard case, 100W amplifier. 410-4555858 or iricse.its@verizon.net.

Ethan Allen sofa, forest green upholstery, dk wood trim, in excel cond. $300 (negotiable). John, 410-256-0369 or tinydancer133@verizon.net.

Dell Inspiron 8100 and 8200, w/dock stations, $130 and $150; Toshiba Satellite L25, $100; eMachine 330 w/monitor, $70; HP ScanJet 4570c scanner, $50; 13" and 21" Sony TVs w/HDTV antenna and digital converters, $60 and $120; NuWave cooker, $60; bread maker, $30; rice cooker, $25; Belgian waffle maker, $15. 410-812-9267 or azhelon@gmail.com.

Singer sewing machines (2), in cabinets, both in working order, $100/ea; Fender acoustic guitar, $150; oak entertainment center, $350. Chris, 443-326-7717.

SERVICES/ITEMS OFFERED OR WANTED

Free to good home: vintage Steinway upright piano, ca 1890, mahogany veneer, orig ivories, not in top-notch playing cond but great for a beginner, extremely heavy and must be moved by prof’l movers. 202251-3972 or rsbclark@comcast.net.

St Thomas Aquinas grade school in Hampden is accepting enrollment for fall 2012, walking distance to JHU, open house Jan 30-Feb 3. 410-889-4618.

Need someone to edit your biomedical journal article or grant application? Jones Biomediting can help. michellejones@ jonesbiomediting.com.

Help send cookies to troops. 443-710-2320 (leave message) or cookiesfortroopsoverseas@ gmail.com.

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

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

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

Tutor available: all subjects/levels; remedial, gifted; help w/college counseling, speech and essay writing, editing, proofreading.

410-337-9877 (after 8pm) or i1__@hotmail .com.

Certified personal and career coach committed to helping young professionals achieve their potential. 410-375-4042 or mmolten1@yahoo.com.

Licensed landscaper avail for fall/winter lawn maintenance, yard cleanup, leaf/snow removal, trash hauling. Taylor Landscaping LLC. 410-812-6090 or romilacapers@ comcast.net.

French tutor w/MAT available. 443-6911412.

Live-in nanny avail, caring, responsible former teacher, years of experience, refs avail. Olya, 443-831-7807 or volha1984@ gmail.com.

Stage your home or office for quick sale, your style, our stage. Amelia, 410-499-6156.

Piano lessons offered by Peabody doctorate, great teaching experience, all levels/ages welcome. 410-662-7951.

Transmission repairs, rebuilt or used, 20% discount for all JHU faculty, staff, students and employees, free estimate. Bob, 410574-8822.

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

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

• We cannot use Johns Hopkins business phone numbers or

e-mail addresses.

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

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

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

(Boxed ads in this section are paid advertisements.)

Classified ads may be faxed to 443-287-9920; e-mailed in the body of a message (no attachments) to gazads@jhu.edu; or mailed to Gazette Classifieds, Suite 540, 901 S. Bond St., Baltimore, MD 21231. To purchase a boxed display ad, contact the Gazelle Group at 443-275-2687.

Live Near Your Work

The Live Near Your Work program provides Johns Hopkins employees with the opportunity to receive combined cash grants from

the university, Baltimore City and the state of Maryland to be used for the purchase of homes within selected local neighborhoods.

Grants are available to full-time, benefits-eligible employees of Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Johns Hopkins Health Care, Johns Hopkins Community Physicians, Johns Hopkins Bayview and Johns Hopkins Home Care Group. Other restrictions may apply. To find out more, contact the Office of Work, Life and Engagement at 443-997-7000 or go to web.jhu.edu/lnyw/index.html.

12 THE GAZETTE • January 30, 2012 J A N .

C OLLO Q U I A

3 0

–

F E B .

6

Calendar

“Yeast Telomerase RNP Architecture and Mechanism: The Nature and Extent of Flexible Scaffolding Provided by the 1157-nt RNA Subunit,” a Biology colloquium with David Zappulla, KSAS. Mudd Hall Auditorium. HW

Wed., Feb. 1, 4:30 p.m.

Black History Month opens on the Homewood campus with a talk by Cedric Jennings, whose life is chronicled in Ron Suskind’s awardwinning 1999 book, ‘A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League.’ The book grew out of a series of articles that Suskind wrote about Jennings for ‘The Wall Street Journal’ that won him the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. See Special Events.

“Advanced Lithium Batteries: One Way to Use, Many Ways to Abuse,” an Applied Physics Laboratory colloquium with Rengaswamy Srinivasan, APL. Parsons Auditorium.

Fri., Feb. 3, 2 p.m.

APL

DISCUSSION/ T AL K S

Johns Hopkins Medicine Distinguished Speaker Series—“Trading Risks: The Impact of Resident Work Hour Regulations on Patients, Providers and the Future of Health Care” with Charles Bosk, University of Pennsylvania. (See In Brief, p. 2.) Address followed by patient/ provider panel and audience Q&A. Co-sponsored by the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. Hurd Hall. EB

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

“Can the Euro Survive?” a SAIS European Studies Program discussion with Giorgio La Malfa, University of Catania, Italy, and member of the Italian Parliament. Co-sponsored by the Washington Foundation for European Studies, the SAIS Center for Transatlantic Relations and the American Consortium on EU Studies. For information, call 202-663-5796 or ntobin@jhu.edu.

806 Rome Bldg. SAIS

Wed., Feb. 1, 5 p.m.

LE C T URE S Tues., Jan. 31, 4 p.m. “Protracted Displacement to New Possibilities,” a Center for Refugee and Disaster Response lecture by Michel Gabaudan, president, Refugees International. W1214 SPH. EB

“Direct Imaging and Spectroscopy of Young Giant Planets” by Travis Barman, Lowell Observatory. Part of the Planets, Life and the Universe Astrobiology Lecture Series sponsored by the Space Telescope Science Institute. Bahcall Auditorium, STSci. HW

Fri., Feb. 3, 12:30 p.m.

MUSIC

Peabody Symphony Orchestra performs works by Mozart, Prokofiev and Strauss. $15 general admission, $10 for senior citizens and $5 for students with valid ID. Friedberg Hall. Peabody

Sat., Feb. 4, 8 p.m.

S E M I N AR S Mon., Jan. 30, 8 a.m. “Management of Colorectal Liver Metastasis: Understanding Shifting Treatment Strategies,” a Graduate Training Program in Clinical

a Health Policy and Management seminar with Michael Furukawa, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. 688 Hampton House. EB

science research seminar with David Fitzpatrick, Max Planck Florida Institute. West Lecture Hall (ground floor), WBSB. EB

Wed., Feb. 1, 12:15 p.m. Mental

Thurs.,

Health Noon Seminar—“Using Evidence-Based Practices to Improve Outcomes in Child Welfare and Child Abuse Intervention Systems” with Mark Chaffin, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. B14B Hampton House. EB

Wed., Feb. 1, 12:15 p.m. “New Biomarkers and Interventions for Life-Threatening Infections,” an International Health seminar with Kevin Kain, University of Toronto, and director, SAR Labs, McLaughlin-Rotman Center for Global Health. W3008 SPH. EB Wed., Feb. 1, 3 p.m. “PCP/ NMDA Models of Schizophrenia: Ideological and Therapeutic Implications,” a Psychiatry seminar with Daniel Javitt, Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research.

Co-sponsored by the Schizophrenia Center. 1-919 Meyer. EB

“Pryrrolysyl-tRNA Synthetase: A Mediocre Enzyle Could Be a Gift From Nature,” a Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences seminar with Wenshe Liu, Texas A&M University. West Lecture Hall (ground floor), WBSB. EB

Wed., Feb. 1, 4 p.m.

Investigation thesis defense seminar with Timothy Pawlik. E2527 SPH. EB Mon., Jan. 30, noon. “IL-18 and IL-18BP in Autoimmune Diseases and Poxvirus Infection,” a Biochemistry and Molecular Biology seminar with Junpeng Deng, Oklahoma State University. W1020 SPH. EB

“Dendrimer-based Nanotherapeutics for the Treatment of Neuroinflammation,” a Biomedical Engineering seminar with Kannan Rangaramanujam, Wayne State Universty. 709 Traylor. EB (Videoconferenced to 110 Clark. HW )

Mon., Jan. 30, 1:30 p.m.

Tues.,

Jan.

31,

10:45

a.m.

“Algorithms for Learning Latent Variable Models,” a Computer Science seminar with Daniel Hsu, Microsoft Research. B17 Hackerman. HW “A Functional Proteomic Approach to Understanding Signaling at the Primary Cilia: Tulp3-IFT-A Functions Through a New Regulator of Mammalian Hedgehog Signal Transduction,” a Biological Chemistry seminar with Saikat Mukhopadhyay, Genentech, South San Francisco. Mountcastle Auditorium, PCTB. EB Tues., Jan. 31, noon.

Tues.,

Jan.

31,

12:10

p.m.

“Fire Safety in America: Your Role in Public Health,” a Graduate Seminar in Injury Research and Policy seminar with Meri-K Appy, president, Appy & Associates, and Shannon Frattaroli, SPH. Sponsored by the Center for Injury Research and Policy.

W2008 SPH. EB “The International Vaccine Institute’s Contribution to Vaccinology and Global Health, Past, Present and Future,” a Global Disease Epidemiology and Control Program seminar with Christian Loucq, director general, International Vaccine Institute. Co-sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Vaccine Initiative. W2030 SPH. EB

Tues., Jan. 31, 12:15 p.m.

Tues.,

Jan.

31,

12:15

p.m.

“Addressing Health Disparities From Nutritional Perspectives,” an International Health faculty candidate seminar with Hee-Jung Song, SoN. W2015 SPH. EB “Beyond the Prevalence: A Flexible Parametric Survival Model for Analysis of Current Status Data,” an Epidemiology thesis defense seminar with Fang Tian. W2033 SPH. Tues., Jan. 31, 1 p.m.

EB

“The Structure of Epigenetic Changes in Cancer as Revealed by Whole Genome Shotgun Bisulfite Sequencing,” an Institute of Genetic Medicine faculty recruitment seminar with Kasper Hansen, SPH. 517 PCTB. EB

Tues., Jan. 31, 2 p.m.

The M. Gordon Wolman Seminar—“The Evolving Water Balance of the Nile River Basin” with Benjamin Zaitchik, KSAS. Sponsored

by Geography and Environmental Engineering. 234 Ames. HW

Tues., Jan. 31, 3 p.m.

Tues., Jan. 31, 3 p.m. “The Langlands Program: The Fairy Tale Continues,” a Mathematics seminar with Claus Sorensen, Princeton University. 300 Krieger. HW

“Exploring the Spatial Dimension of Gene Expression,” a Biology seminar with Jason Casolari, Stanford University School of Medicine.

100 Mudd. HW

Tues., Jan. 31, 4 p.m.

“Why Context Matters: The Case of Vitamin A Supplementation Trials to Reduce Maternal Mortality in Asia and Africa,” a Center for Clinical Trials seminar with Keith West, SPH. W4030 SPH. EB

Wed., Feb. 1, 8:30 a.m.

“Inference With Implicit Likelihoods for Infectious Disease Models,” a Biostatistics seminar with Roman Jandarov, Penn State University.

W2030 SPH. EB

Wed., Feb. 1, 4 p.m.

Tropical Medicine Dinner Club of Baltimore—“Challenges to Providing Full Coverage With Artemisinin Combination Therapies (ACRs) in Ghana” with Sarah Dalglish, SPH and SoN. $20 for members for the seminar and buffet, $25 for non-members, $15 for residents and fellows and $10 for students.

RSVP by 9 a.m. on Jan. 30 to mksmith@jhsph.edu. Johns Hopkins Club. HW

Wed., Feb. 1, 6:30 p.m.

Thurs., Feb. 2, noon. The Bromery Seminar—“Banded Iron Formation and Ancient Life” with Kurt Konhauser, University of Alberta. Sponsored by Earth and Planetary Sciences. Olin Auditorium. HW

“Toward Evidence-Informed Health Policies—Global Principles and Experiences,” an International Health seminar with Goran Tomson, Karolinska Institutet. W2030 SPH.

Thurs., Feb. 2, noon.

EB

“Polarity Establishment in Yeast,” a Cell Biology seminar with Daniel Lew, Duke University Medical School.

Suite 2-200, 1830 Bldg. EB

Thurs., Feb. 2, noon.

Wed., Feb. 1, 11 a.m. “Regulation and Neuronal Role of Diacylglycerol Kinase-Theta,” a Physiology seminar with Daniel Raben, SoM. 203 Physiology. EB

Thurs., Feb. 2, 12:15 p.m. “The Challenge of Feeding Nine Billion by Mid-Century,” a Nutrition seminar with Robert Thompson, SAIS. Co-sponsored by International Health, the Center for a Livable Future and the George G. Graham Endowment. W2008 SPH. EB

Wed., Feb. 1, noon. “Hospital Adoption and Meaningful Use of Health Information Technology,”

Thurs., Feb. 2, 1 p.m. “Representations With Experience: Insights From Visual Cortex,” a Neuro-

Feb.

2,

1:30

p.m.

“The Implicit Representations of Graphs Conjecture,” an Applied Mathematics and Statistics seminar with Ed Scheinerman, WSE. 304 Whitehead. HW “The Mechanisms and Molecules of Microbial Interspecies Interactions,” a Biology special seminar with Elizabeth Shank, Harvard Medical School. 100 Mudd. HW

Thurs., Feb. 2, 4 p.m.

“Rational Agency and Normative Concepts,” a Philosophy seminar with Geoff Sayre-McCord, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

288 Gilman. HW

Thurs., Feb. 2, 5 p.m.

“Stirred, Not Shaken: Mixing in the Ocean,” a CEAFM seminar with Alberto Scotti, University of North Carolina. 50 Gilman. HW

Fri., Feb. 3, 11 a.m.

Fri., Feb. 3, 1 p.m. “Cross-sectional and Longitudinal Penalized Functional Regression,” a Biostatistics thesis defense seminar with Jeffrey Goldsmith. W2030 SPH. EB Fri., Feb. 3, 4 p.m. “Modeling the Obesity Epidemic in the UK and the World: Trends and Consequences,” a Johns Hopkins Global Center for Childhood Obesity seminar with Kim McPherson, United Kingdom National Heart Forum and Oxford University. Sponsored

by International Health. W2008 SPH. EB Mon., Feb. 6, noon. “The Biochemistry of the MUC2 Mucin and Its Dual Role in Protecting the Intestine and Promoting the Commensal Bacterial Flora,” a Biological Chemistry seminar with Gunnar Hansson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. 612 Physiology. EB Mon., Feb. 6, 12:15 p.m. “The Unusual Mechanism for Regulating Ubiquitination in the DNA Damage Response by OTUB1,” a Carnegie Institution Embryology seminar with Cynthia Wolberger, SoM. Rose Auditorium, 3520 San Martin Drive. HW

“Neural Mechanisms for Committing to a Choice About Action,” a Biomedical Engineering seminar with Paul Cisek, University of

Mon., Feb. 6, 1:30 p.m.

Continued on page 10

(Events are free and Calendar

open to the public Key

except where indicated.)

APL BRB CRB EB HW JHOC

Applied Physics Laboratory Broadway Research Building Cancer Research Building East Baltimore Homewood 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