Johns Hopkins Magazine by The Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins W i nt e r

2010

MA GA Z I N E

Stamping Out Disease Meet the shoe-leather sleuths of epidemiology.

Begin your own tradition.

Something truly precious holds its beauty forever.

Annual Calendar Ref. 4936G, Calatrava rings.

Johns Hopkins W i nt e r

2010

MAGAZINE

v o l. 62 n o. 4

Features 28

Outbreak Agents By Michael Anft Officers in the Epidemic Intelligence Service—including many Johns Hopkins faculty and alumni—expend shoe leather to stamp out disease.

The Force Is with Her By Margaret Guroff, A&S ’89 (MA) Annelise Pruitt, A&S ’04, follows her curiosity wherever it leads her. This year, it led her to design the website Star Wars Uncut—and to win an Emmy.

D.I.Y. Opera By Dale Keiger The collapse of a grand opera company does not mean the end of opera. A collection of enterprising Peabody graduates with a do-it-yourself spirit has seen to that.

Atoms, Genes, and Everything In Between By Michael Anft An incomparable collection of rare books—recently bequeathed by Elliott Hinkes, A&S ’64, Med ’67, to the Sheridan Libraries—traces the arc of scientific thought.

A New Kind of War By Jay Pridmore For faculty at the SAIS Bologna Center, the war in Afghanistan is a case study of what not to do in an ethnic conflict.

Cover illustration by Stephanie Dalton Cowan

38 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 1

Departments 3

Contributors: Disease Wars and Star Wars

The Big Question: What Makes Us Unique?

The Big Picture: It Paints a Village

Editor’s Note: A Little Levity

Letters: What You Meant to Say...

Essay: Techno-Geezers

Golomb’s Gambits: Calendar Oddities

Wholly Hopkins: Matters of note from around Johns Hopkins 4

16 Writing Seminars: Klamming up 17 Mathematics: Back to basics for the “division clueless” 19 Medicine: Is rapid response good medicine? 21 Libraries: The Welch goes digital

22 University: Who got Johns’ house?

23 Public Health: When humans stampede

24 Books: Sky watchers

26 Public Health: Tanzania turns to the Muppets to help kids

Alumni News & Notes

Golomb’s Solutions

How To: Land a Robot on an Asteroid

55 2 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

C o n t r i b u to r s Vol. 62 No. 4 Winter 2010

Editor: Catherine Pierre Associate Editor: Dale Keiger Senior Writer: Michael Anft Art Director: Shaul Tsemach Designer: Pamela Li Alumni News & Notes: Lisa Belman, Nora Koch, and Kirsten Lavin Business Manager: Dianne MacLeod

Johns Hopkins Magazine (publication number 276-260; ISSN 0021-7255) is published four times a year (Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer) by The Johns Hopkins University, 901 S. Bond Street, Suite 540, Baltimore, MD 21231. Produced in cooperation with University Magazine Group. Periodicals postage paid at Baltimore, Maryland, and additional entry offices. Address correspondence to Johns Hopkins Magazine, Johns Hopkins University, 901 S. Bond Street, Suite 540, Baltimore, MD 21231. Via e-mail: jhmagazine@jhu.edu. Web site: magazine.jhu.edu Telephone: 443-287-9900 Subscriptions: $20 yearly, $25 foreign Diverse views are presented and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or official policies of the university.

Disease Wars and Star Wars Illustrating courage and purpose That boot you see on this issue’s cover was inspired by the “shoeleather epidemiologists” in Michael Anft’s feature “Outbreak Agents,” about the Johns Hopkins faculty and alumni involved with the Epidemic Intelligence Service. Illustrator Stephanie Dalton Cowan says she thinks of them as “heroes entering into remote catastrophic areas to manage disease, much the way firefighters head into burning buildings.” In creating the cover images, “I wanted to convey the singularity of purpose and courage it takes for these doctors to trek into the unknown.” Cowan lives and works in Atlanta. Her illustrations have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and Fortune. She knows from driven As a Johns Hopkins graduate and lecturer in the Krieger School’s Advanced Academic Programs, Margaret Guroff, A&S ’89 (MA), knows about driven students. “There are plenty of brilliant undergrads at Hopkins, but Annelise stood out in the memories of teachers I spoke with as a particularly aggressive and inventive seeker of knowledge,” says Guroff, who profiles Annelise Pruitt, A&S ’04, in this issue’s “The Force Is with Her.” Pruitt won an Emmy for her design of the website Star Wars Uncut. “I may be the only person in America who has seen the original film only once,” says Guroff, a magazine editor in Washington, D.C. The website “reminded me how much a part of our culture [the movie] has become.” —CP

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The Big Question

Stephen Spartana

What Makes Us Unique?

4 Johns Hopkins Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2010

“With the exception of genetically identical twins, each person’s genome is a unique combination of DNA sequences that play major roles in determining who we are. Intense research is ongoing to understand genetic differences between people. Why the interest from science? By understanding how one person’s DNA differs from another’s, we may uncover variations that not only create our individual traits, such as how we look, but also create susceptibilities to a myriad of diseases. “Repetitive DNA sequences have long been understudied but are important to what makes each of us genetically unique. Scientists used to call these repeating sequences ‘junk DNA,’ and their importance has remained undiscovered because technical barriers made them hard to identify and study. Recently, research groups at Johns Hopkins have overcome those challenges to develop methods to map these repeating sequences. We’ve found that they play a key role in determining the uniqueness of our genome. Our research confirms that repetitive DNA sequences don’t stay in the same place— they move around in the human genome and insert copies of themselves here and there. They can also mobilize—‘copy and paste’— other sequences. Together, these insertions actually make up a large fraction of our DNA, and we think that understanding them will be important in giving us clues as to an individual’s unique risk of contracting disease.” —Kathleen Burns, an assistant professor of pathology at the School of Medicine, is the leader of one of three Hopkins labs attempting to unravel the sometimes-unpredictable nature of DNA.

Interview by Michael Anft

Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 5

Photo by Art Cohen

T h e B i g P i c t u re

6 Johns Hopkins Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2010

It Paints a Village For two months last summer,Tom Chalkley, an adjunct faculty member who teaches cartooning in the Homewood Art Workshops, along with artists Kenny Clemons and Greg Gannon, transformed a Waverly wall into a bright, lively portrait of the neighborhood, which sits just a few blocks from the Homewood campus. They were helped by 30 volunteers, including a dozen Johns Hopkins undergraduates, who assisted in painting scenes of Waverly’s farmers market, library, playground, fire hall, and residents. “The neighborhood folks were very supportive” of the project, Chalkley says. “It made me feel vindicated in my belief that public art should relate to the public. This is a big, pretty picture, but it has a community function.” Pictured here is Annette Abramson, a friend of Chalkley’s who helped to paint the mural. —Catherine Pierre

Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 7

E d i to r ’s N o te

A Little Levity

ust for fun, I asked Margaret Guroff, A&S ’89 (MA), if she could remake one scene from the movie Star Wars, what would it be? “I guess it’d be the hologram of Princess Leia,” she told me. “Not sure why though.” Me, I’d take any scene with Chubaka. This wasn’t an entirely random exchange. Meg penned this issue’s “The Force Is with Her” (page 36), about fellow Writing Sems graduate Annelise Pruitt, A&S ’04, who won an Emmy this summer for her design of the website Star Wars Uncut. The site splices together 15-second user-generated clips into a single slightly insane version of the original. It won the Emmy for outstanding achievements in interactive media. As soon as we heard about the award, and the website, we knew we had to write a story. Johns Hopkins people— and so, in turn, Johns Hopkins Magazine—regularly tackle the world’s most daunting and serious problems. See, as an example, senior writer Michael Anft’s cover story, “Outbreak Agents” (page 28), about medical and public health researchers who are on the scene at natural and other disasters to track and manage disease. Or freelancer Jay Pridmore’s account of the war in Afghanistan and the faculty at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies’ Bolgona Center who are trying to track, manage, and understand the ethnic conflicts that erupt into international war (“A

New Kind of War,” page 50). How fun to shine a little light on some of the quirkier successes the university’s alumni are enjoying. Meg, who edits and publishes the website Power Moby-Dick, an online annotation of Herman Melville’s novel, seemed the right person for the job. Of course, a little levity finds its way into the most serious of pursuits. The Epidemic Intelligence Service officers at the center of Mike’s story have a brown shoe with a wornout sole for a logo to emphasize the shoe leather–expending aspects of their work. During the Korean War, when many joined the Service to avoid being sent to the front line, they jokingly referred to themselves as the “Yellow Berets.” My guess is that if what you do for a living is run to disaster instead of away from it, you’d better have a sense of humor. And then there’s associate editor Dale Keiger’s story, “D.I.Y. Opera” (page 38), about several Peabody graduates who, when the local grand opera company failed, up and started their own companies. What they lack in funding and stage-management experience, they make up for with talent, drive, cleverness, and the occasional irreverent take on the classics. So seriously, enjoy the issue. Have a laugh. And if you’re so inclined, grab your lightsaber and pretend you’re Luke Skywalker.

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L e t te r s What You Meant to Say... Bearing reproof I enjoy receiving Johns Hopkins Magazine. Even when I am too busy to read the entire issue, I always check in with the puckishly pseudonymed Guido Veloce and usually enjoy a perceptive critique of contemporary absurdity that passes for everyday life. So I was especially disappointed by “Star, Lite” [Essay, Fall]. Quoth the intrepid curmudgeon, “It doesn’t take much to be a ‘star’ today. Precipitating that comment was a grizzly murder, bizarre even by Southern California standards.” I was immediately on guard for a story about a notoriously dangerous, large, brown bear or perhaps an elderly malefactor whose viciousness belied his gray beard. But no. The murder was neither grizzly nor grizzled; it was supposed to be grisly. When the main point turns on the “real” meaning of a word, that point is quite lost when a brown bear stands in for a horrific occurrence. So, regrettably, a former occasional pleasure goes aglimmering. It’s a “doggie dog world.” If you don’t “tow the line,” you may be hoist on your own petard. Marc Standish, Ed ’05 (MAT) Baltimore, Maryland Autism, a treatable disability Thank you very much for this opportunity to respond to your recent autism article [Wholly Hopkins, “Advancing Autism Education, Near and Far,” Fall]. Although the article was well written, I was left with some concerns regarding the accuracy of two points of particular importance. First, autism is not an “incurable disease.” It is a neurological developmental disability that affects individuals of all cultures and backgrounds. Although there is no known cure for autism at this time, there are many effective strategies that can be used to help individuals with autism reach their highest potential. Furthermore, autism is a spectrum disorder that affects people in very individual ways. As such, it is never appropriate to suggest that individuals with autism cannot make great gains in all areas and, in a great

number of cases, lead highly successful and fulfilling lives. In fact, hope and high expectations for our students with autism are just as important as, if not more important than, the mastery of all of the effective strategies we are currently recommending. Secondly, while I am a proponent of pivotal response training (PRT) and do recommend it often, PRT is just one of several interventions that apply the principles of applied behavior analysis (ABA). ABA, in short, is the science of human behavior and involves understanding how the environment triggers and reinforces behavior. I recommend ABA for use with all individuals on the autism spectrum, as well as individuals with other disabilities. PRT, as one good example, utilizes the tenets of ABA well and is an effective strategy for many individuals with autism. Danielle Liso, Ed ’01 (MS) Assistant Professor of Special Education, School of Education Political to the bones I enjoyed your article “What Killed Bolívar?” [Wholly Hopkins, Fall]. I happened to be in Venezuela when the exhumation of the Great Liberator took place. The episode was bizarre, to say the least, with Chavez tweeting on his Twitter account that he wept at the exhumation, seeing Bolívar’s “glorious skeleton.” Most Venezuelans I spoke with viewed the entire episode as a farce, just one more stunt in a long line by Hugo Chavez to co-opt and change the past for his present political gain. The article quotes Chavez: “They killed [Bolívar]. . . . I don’t know if we’ll be able to prove it, but I think they assassinated him.” It’s important to explain who the “they” is. Chavez was referring to Colombians. Relations between the two countries have been strained for years, stemming from several issues, not the least of which is Colombia’s partnership with the United States. Border tensions between Colombia and Venezuela flared up earlier this year, prompting

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1. Title of Publication: Johns Hopkins Magazine 2. Publication no.: 276-260 3. Date of filing: September 16, 2010. 4. Issue frequency: 4 times per year 5. Number of issues published annually: 4 6. Annual subscription price: $20.00 domestic, $25.00 foreign 7. Mailing address of publication: Johns Hopkins Magazine, 901 S. Bond St., Suite 540, Baltimore, MD 21231. 8. Mailing address of headquarters or general business office of the publisher: Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21218. 9. Names and addresses of publisher, editor, and managing editor–Publisher: Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21218. Editor: Catherine Pierre, Johns Hopkins Magazine, 901 S. Bond St., Suite 540, Baltimore, MD 21231. 10. Owner (if owned by a corporation, its name and address be stated to be followed immediately thereafter the names and addresses of stockholders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total amount of stock. If not owned by a corporation, the names and addresses of the individual owners must be given. If owned by a partnership or other unincorporated firm, its name and address, as well as that of each individual owner): Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218. 11. Known bondholders, mortgages, and other security holders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities: none. 12. The purpose, function, and nonproft status for federal income tax purposes have not changed during the preceding 12 months. 13. Publication name: Johns Hopkins Magazine 14. Issue date for circulation data below: Fall 2010. 15. Extent and nature of circulation:

a. Total no. copies printed b. Paid and/or Requested circulation (1) Paid/Requested Outside-County Mail subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541. (2) Paid In-County Subscriptions States on PS Form 3541 (3) Sales Through Dealers and Carriers,Street Vendors, Counter Sales, and or Other Non-USPS Paid Distribution (4) Other Classes Mailed Through the USPS c. Total Paid and/or Requested Circulation d. Free Distribution by Mail and outside mail (1) Outside-County as Stated on PS Form 3541 (2) In-County as Stated on PS Form 3541 (3) Other Classes Mailed Through the USPS (4) Free Distribution Outside the Mail (Carriers or other means) e. Total Free Distribution (Sum of 15d. (1)(2)(3)(4).) f. Total Distribution (Sum of 15c. and 15e.)

Average no. copies each issue during preceding 12 months 125,885

Actual no. single issue nearest to filing date 123,931

111,693

111,277

5,297

5,366

6,203

5,988

123,193

122,631

1,242

1,335

1,242

1,335

124,435

123,966

g.Copies not Distributed

1,450

1,300

h.Total (Sum of 15f. and g.)

125,885

125,266

97.8%

97.9%

i. Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation (15c. divided by 15f. times 100)

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the closure of several border towns and the suspension of diplomatic relations. If Chavez can “prove” that Bolívar was murdered by Colombian rebels 200 years ago, it would give him, and presumably the Venezuelan people, further belief in the righteousness of the current scuffle with their neighbors. Johns Hopkins professor Paul Auwaerter must find himself somewhat bemused by being pulled into the matter, but when it comes to Simon Bolívar and his legacy in Venezuela, all is sacred—and all is political. Evan L. Balkan, A&S ‘05 (MA) Lutherville, Maryland Pimped to play How wonderful and generous that Karl Kostoff has left his beautiful 1620 Maggini to Peabody! However, I was disappointed a little in the photo [Wholly Hopkins, “Vignette,” Fall] because it did not show in detail what is distinctive about such a piece of early 17th-century craftsmanship: the outline, the scroll, the purfling inset around its edges. In fact, much of what we do see is characteristic of later centuries: the chinrest, invented 200 years after the instrument was built; the modern-style tailpiece with tuner adapted to a steel E string, all from the early 20th century; and a bow of a design from the late 18th century. It’s as if someone had bequeathed a 1957 Chevrolet that had been thoroughly “pimped” for racing. That Chevy was not originally built for power, nor was the Maggini violin. Performance conditions and repertoire in 1620 were entirely different from those in 1720, 1820, or 1920. It is remarkable that this Renaissance acoustic amplifier still functions at all in a 21st-century concert setting, in spite of nearly all of its components having been replaced or “improved” since it was first built. The “dark” sound that it produces is in part due to the extreme tension put on the instrument by modifications to its neck, the change from organic gut strings to metal, the heavy weight of the bow, and the ever-rising pitch level of modern concert life, all brought about by a change in

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priority from resonance to projection, from quality to quantity. Nonetheless, the Maggini is a survivor, and I trust that it will find at Peabody players who appreciate what is left of its intrinsic qualities. Anthony P. Martin, Peab ’73 (MM) Richmond, California Happy thoughts Readers respond to our question “What Makes You Happy?” in the Fall issue: In 1961–1962, when I took my courses in Operations Research at Johns Hopkins University, I learned that there are “local optima” and “total optima”— meaning there could be many “local optimum points or solutions,” but there is only one overall solution that is optimum. Think of hills: You may be standing on top of a hill, you may say that is the highest point, but there may be other nearby hills in the terrain with other high points. The challenge is to find the overall optima—and not get stuck with local optima. Maximization of “happy moments” is my desire or wish, whether I live 10 more years or 30. Satinder Mullick, Engr ’65 (PhD) Corning, New York My simple definition of happiness is being kept busy, doing things I enjoy, with people I enjoy doing them with. Happiness should be shared with others. Bill Howard, A&S ’84 St. Louis, Missouri Although we didn’t read every piece on happiness in the Fall issue, we were reminded that an interviewer once asked Tennessee Williams, “What is your definition of happiness?” He responded, “Insensitivity, I guess.” Mary Seidel, Ed ’94 (MS) Robert Seidel, A&S ’91 (MLA) Baltimore, Maryland

www.andyo.org 12 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

Pornography’s true victims I want to speak up on behalf of my knight in shining armor, Sir Guido Veloce, who came in defense of me and

It’s the of

my sisters of the world [Essay, “The Opposite of Sex,” Summer]. It’s about time someone addressed the whiney voices of the latest pseudo addiction. Professor Anonymous [Letters, “A Serious Addiction,” Fall] felt marginalized, poked fun at, and spotlighted by Guido. But guess who else has those feelings? All of the wives, daughters, and sisters who are directly or indirectly victimized by pornography and the people who use it. Pornography makes every woman in this country feel unsafe. Not every outrageous behavior should be attributed to illness. That simply gives so-called sexual addicts yet another group to marginalize and victimize: those who really do suffer from sickness, from addictions, and from the threat of losing those things dear to them every single day of their lives. Pat Bonnell, Ed ’96 (MS) Baltimore, Maryland

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Essay

Techno-Geezers

y parents’ generation was mostly technophobic, with the partial exception of my dad, a tinkerer who liked gadgets, although primarily because they existed rather than for what they did. When the Japanese made high-quality, sophisticated cameras affordable, even he headed for a point-and-shoot, the simpler the better. An aunt never mastered remote controls at a time when all 12-year-olds could hook up a VCR in no time flat—and did so for their elders. The technology generation gap was striking. You would expect it to have grown with the proliferation of personal computers, smartphones, and elaborate home entertainment centers. Maybe not. Frequent and costly fieldwork at a national electronics chain store revealed many of the young and tattooed among the customers, but also a sizable representation of the balding, graying, and sagging—my people. They were even asking sensible questions about such things as wireless networks and HDMI cables. They were talking the talk. Equally inspiring, my fellow codgers weren’t intimidated by the knowledgeable young sales staff, some of whom were probably cutting middle school classes. Perhaps, unlike their parents, this aging cadre of technojunkies will not go gentle into that good night without BlackBerrys and Wi-Fi. They will not rage against the dying of the light, as Dylan Thomas would have it, but against dropped signals. That came home to me—literally—during a lovely visit by friends of long standing, one of whom retired recently. The key event was an outdoors fall afternoon conversation. Once we meandered through the usual topics—kids, mutual friends, politics, and food—there was a technology show-and-tell session, with an iPad winning the prize for coolness and the reward that comes with it: envy. (Christmas is coming.) The next event was a smartphone smackdown. We started with the negative. The consensus was that our instruments of choice

14 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

weren’t much good as telephones. However gorgeous they might look in the hand, the effect of using one to make or receive a call was like taking a cigarette case you see in old movies and slamming it against your ear. We nonetheless agreed that among the ways in which our smartphones excelled was in making humans look stupid. I had mine a week, and used it to make two restaurant reservations via the Internet, before figuring out how to answer an incoming call from anyone retrograde enough to make one. Another way in which smartphones excelled was in turning pricey little chunks of technology into things God never intended telephones to be. Mine got points for serving as a compass (proving conclusively that our north/south street doesn’t run north and south) and displaying a star map. The latter definitively identified a large glowing object in the sky as the moon. Because my wife was sitting next to me, I couldn’t demonstrate another nifty feature that allows us to know where the other is. Unfortunately, it isn’t terribly accurate and when she is presumably at work it shows her in a nearby graveyard. This feature could cause domestic problems. My favorite app in the mostly useless competition was one that turns the phone into a level. Even as a kid growing up with cheap sci-fi serial movies, it never occurred to me that Buck Rogers might use a telephone to hang pictures straight, whatever straight might be in outer space. There we were as that beautiful day ended, aging kids in an electronic candy store. If my fieldwork is representative, we are not alone. It’s a long way from my remote control–impaired aunt, as I realized overhearing a woman in her golden years respond to a sales pitch for a smartphone with an enthusiastic “Oh my God!” Her granddaughter couldn’t have said it better and wouldn’t have put it differently. Guido Veloce is a Johns Hopkins University professor.

Gilbert Ford

B y “ G u i d o Ve l o c e ”

Golomb’s Gambits TM

Calendar Oddities By Solomon Golomb ’51

A. Identify the common feature shared by the five members of each one of the following sets of holidays or commemorations (a different feature for each set). 1. New Year’s Day Groundhog Day Cinco de Mayo D-Day Armistice Day 2. President’s Day Mardi Gras Easter Labor Day Thanksgiving 3. Valentine’s Day St. Patrick’s Day Flag Day Bastille Day Christmas Day

D. Puzzlers 1. If septum is Latin for “seven,” why is September the ninth month?

B. Arrange the following lunar “months” in order of length (from shortest to longest) and explain how each is determined. 1. anomalistic month 2. nodal month 3. sidereal month 4. synodic month 5. tropical month

2. Why does the Muslim year average only around 354 days?

C. Translate the following terms from their calendrical meanings into plain English. 1. dominical letter 2. ephemeris 3. intercalate (verb) 4. bissextile (adj.) 5. embolism (noun)

3. If summer officially begins with the summer solstice (usually between June 19 and June 23), why is Midsummer Day celebrated on June 24? 4. Why did the Soviet Union celebrate the “October Revolution” in November? 5. What is the origin of “thermidor” in lobster thermidor?

(Solutions on page 67)

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www. www w. rolandparkplace.org rolandparkplace.org e oorg Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 15

Wholly Hopkins

Matters of note from around Johns Hopkins

Wr i t i n g S e m i n a r s

Klamming up

myself having that conversation,” he explains, eyes darting under a blond shock of Eraserhead f you don’t mind, I’m going to lie down—my hair. “I don’t want to hear it in my head when ass hurts,” Matthew Klam tells a just-arrived I’m trying to work tomorrow. I hate talking about stranger before stretching out on the couch the process because even when it goes well, it’s in his office. Although the scenario—one guy flat shockingly difficult.” So, um, what is he writing on his back on a couch, the other in a chair with these days? “It’s a piece of fiction,” he says, refushis legs crossed and a notebook in his lap—looks ing to peg the opus further. “I wouldn’t tell you what it was, even if I knew.” A rainbow of colored lights—the room’s only illumination—eerily snakes along the walls. “I don’t have a window,” he says, mocking a pout. “I’m thinking I was incarcerated in a past life.” Named by The New Yorker in 1999 as one of the top 20 fiction writers under the age of 40, Klam followed up a year later with Sam the Cat and Other Stories (Random House), a compendium of stories that had appeared sporadically in the magazine. The book marked Klam’s arrival as a voice of the hungry young male, a species noted for its sexual energy, risky behavior, and an utter (and often desperate) need for love. He writes about men for whom John Updike’s truism—“Sex is what Critics praise author Matthew Klam for the vividness and honesty of his stories. keeps us walking toward the cliff”— like something out of The Three Faces of Eve or might well serve as a motto. That some of them Analyze This, Klam isn’t giving up any secrets. end up tumbling over it and into the abyss—by Recently named an assistant professor following through on an embarrassing homoby the Krieger School’s Writing Seminars, the erotic urge, or making an angry if truthful speech cult-renowned short-story author is about as at a bigwig friend’s wedding, or wooing another likely to go on about the way he works, and woman as his wife goes into labor—seems to why, as he is to turn on an overhead light in his come along with the Y chromosome. little cavern of an office. “I don’t want to talk Now 46, but still looking a bit like one of about my process because I don’t want to hear his youthful characters, Klam is no longer an

Mark Finkenstaedt

16 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

emerging star. He writes stories and nonfiction regularly for magazines like The New Yorker and GQ, sometimes revising as many as 30 drafts before cashing a check. He sighs when the laurels of his past are brought up. “I wouldn’t wish that on anybody,” he says. “It’s much easier to manage modest expectations.” When Google alerted him to the fact that he was mentioned in online discussions about The New Yorker’s newest list of literary wunderkinds, published last summer, he was distressed that people “were pitying me” because he hadn’t become a literary brand name like fellow 1999 honorees Junot Diaz, Jhumpa Lahiri, and David Foster Wallace. “I had to turn all the alerts off,” he says. Nevertheless, critics and others have heralded, then and since, the honesty and vividness of Klam’s stories. “There’s wonderful energy to his prose,” says Alice McDermott, professor and writer-in-residence in the Writing Sems. McDermott and Klam serve on the committee of the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Foundation Award for Fiction. She called Klam to let him know of the open teaching spot in the department. “His stories seem to tumble out, determined to be told,” she says. Klam’s embodiment of that energy, along with his devotion to the short story, is attractive to his students, she adds: “Unlike the rest of us [in the Writing Seminars], Matt has thus far dedicated his efforts in fiction to the short story alone. It’s clearly a form he has mastered. Since most of our fiction students begin with the short story, Matt is in many ways the ideal first reader of their work.” As he veers between off-the-cuff eccentric and evasive, Klam does spill a few facts about his methods. He lives the credo of Michel de Montaigne—who wrote: “My mind will not budge unless my legs move it”—by standing at a computer each day, sometimes for hours, spending the “two weeks to one year” it takes to crank out a story that reads like it just crept up on you and started talking. He remains upright, he says, “because it’s just my belief that people who spend a lot of time sitting won’t last that long.” A friend of his, a surgeon, recommended gum-soled clogs as a comfort measure for those condemned (or who condemn themselves) to a day filled with verticality. Klam enthuses about them like a boy does about the bells and whistles on his new bike. When he’s not on alert and writing at his work station, Klam teaches several courses each semester. He recently co-founded a Washington, D.C., chapter of 826 Valencia, the

chain of charities established by author, publisher, and literary impresario Dave Eggers. The organization encourages school-age kids to put pen to paper. And he’s still got plenty of energy left over to protect his space. “See this?” he says, pointing to a garish set of warped and oversized dentures that look like something off the set of a Tim Burton film. He takes a huge, matching toothbrush out and puts it to work. “When I want my students to leave, I tell them it’s time to brush my teeth.” Taking the hint, the stranger wishes him luck and slips out the door, slowly closing it behind him. —Michael Anft

Mathematics

Back to basics for the “division clueless”

eviewing his son’s grade-school homework in the early 2000s diverted W. Stephen Wilson from his research in algebraic topology to question basic math education. At two well-regarded private schools, Wilson’s son had encountered the most widely used elementary math curricula, Investigations and Everyday Mathematics. Both encourage the use of calculators for multiplication and division, in line with a 1989 report from the National Council of Teachers of “You might use a calculator if Mathematics that downyou’re an engineer, but you need played teaching arithmeto know what it does. If you tic with pencil and paper. “What the schools were need mathematics in your career, doing with math was then it is probably a good idea to beyond my imagination,” really understand it.” Wilson says. “I knew that my kid’s third-grade math wasn’t going to prepare him for college.”

A professor of mathematics in the Krieger School, Wilson teaches calculus to undergraduates. In 2006, he decided to conduct an experiment with his Johns Hopkins students. His Calculus I for the Biological and Social Sciences class that year bore close resemblance to the 1989 class. Their scores on the SAT math exam were nearly identical, and the two groups contained the same percentage of freshmen. Curious to see how they’d compare on the same exam, he gave the 2006 students the same 77-point final that he’d given the 1989 class. The results, he Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

Sean Kelly

Wholly Hopkins

believes, confirmed his hunch that students were coming out of K–12 schooling less prepared for college math. When he compared scores by the grading scale in use in 1989, 27 percent of the 1989 students received As on the exam and 37 percent scored Bs. Only 6 percent of his 2006 students would have received As, 26 percent Bs. Johns Hopkins had changed its grading by 2006, and when Wilson scored the tests using the newer scale, the students compared the same: 52 percent of the 1989 kids scored As, compared to only 31 percent of the 2006 students. As another experiment, Wilson gave a short test of basic math skills at the start of his Calculus III class in 2007. The results predicted how students later fared on the final exam. Those who could use pencil and paper to do basic multiplication and long division at the beginning of the semester scored better on the final Calc III material. His most startling finding was that 33 out of 236 advanced students didn’t even know how to begin a long division problem. Wilson says he wouldn’t be so against calculator use if teachers still taught multiplication 18 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

and division by hand as well, regardless of the fact that few will ever do math that way as adults. “The theory that people should only learn what they are going to use as adults doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he explains. “If you take that to the extreme, there wouldn’t be much left to K–12 education. If someone is going to fly an airplane when they grow up, should we skip all the intermediate steps and just teach them how to fly an airplane when they are 10?” His studies of Johns Hopkins students are “all sort of having fun, not serious education research,” he says. But his advocacy of math education reform has led to appointments to local and national advisory panels and conferences. In 2006 he served as senior adviser for mathematics in the U.S. Department of Education, where he helped form the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. Since his return to his Hopkins classes in 2007, Wilson has continued to review K–12 curricula for various states. Wilson has found that the brightest students work around what he calls their “unnecessary handicap.” In his study of 2007 Calculus

III students, for example, the correlation between being “division clueless” and scoring poorly on the final exam wasn’t as strong as he would have guessed; some of those students did just fine. But that seemed true only for the minority. When he followed up on the class two years later in 2009, one-third of the “division-clueless” students were on academic probation. Wilson doesn’t like the long-term implications of a new generation of engineers and scientists who can’t divide or don’t know their multiplication tables. He compares it to having car mechanics who only know how to fix automatic transmissions. “You might use a calculator if you’re an engineer, but you need to know what it does. If you need mathematics in your career, then it is probably a good idea to really understand it,” he says. “You don’t understand it if you can’t do it.” —Lisa Watts

Medicine

Rapid response saves lives, but is it good medicine?

patient, recently released from intensive care to the hospital’s main floor, gasps for breath. Her heart beats rapidly. A nurse recognizes that this patient is spiraling toward death. She notifies her supervisors to call in the hospital’s rapid response team of intensive-care specialists. The team, drawn from a cadre of physicians, nurses, and respiratory therapists already on the hospital’s ICU staff, stabilizes the patient, then returns to its regular duties. That heroic drama, played out thousands of times each year in hospitals across the country, has been promoted as a prime example of how to improve the quality of patient care. But not everyone is enthusiastic about the recent explosion in the number of rapid response teams, or RRTs. In an article in the September 22 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Peter Pronovost, professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the School of Medicine, and Eugene Litvak, professor of health policy and management at the Harvard School of Public Health, argue that instead of being an example of better health care, use of RRTs points out shortcomings in basic patient care. The authors don’t question that the teams save lives. They do ask if

patients would be better served by more appropriate monitoring, placement in the hospital, and treatment in the first place. “There’s no doubt that patients can deteriorate in the hospital ward without being noticed early on,” says Pronovost, Med ’99 (PhD). “But what we ought to be doing instead of trumpeting the role of rapid response teams is advancing the science as to how we deal with those cases.” Hospitals form RRTs to deal with patients who “crash”—exhibit life-threatening symptoms such as shortness of breath, very low or very high blood pressure, changes in mental status,

Now we k n ow …Scientists have discovered that pancreatic cancer develops over a much longer span of time than previously believed. A team led by Johns Hopkins researchers Shinichi Yachida and Siân Jones found that it takes on average 11.7 years for the first mutation within a pancreatic lesion to become a cancer cell, then an average of 6.8 years for the malignancy to develop the potential to metastasize. The findings suggest a much broader opportunity for diagnosis and prevention than previously understood. The research appeared in the October 28 issue of Nature. …In new Krieger School research, lab mice had to press a lever 15 times to get a food treat versus only once for a different treat. Later, when offered free access to both morsels, the mice preferred the one that previously had taken the most effort to obtain. The experiment showed that mice chose food that required the most work even when it was lower in calories than the easier alternative. The study, which appeared in November in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, could provide insight into altering unhealthy behavior in people. Lead author was Alexander W. Johnson, associate research scientist in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. …New computer simulations out of the Bloomberg School indicate the United States has become more susceptible to potential epidemics of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). Published in September by PLoS ONE, the simulation results showed that, paradoxically, U.S. success at reducing drug-susceptible TB has reduced the population’s “herd immunity” to MDR-TB. Senior author on the paper was associate professor David Bishai. …Remove specific proteins from the lateral amygdala of a mouse’s brain, and you can permanently delete traumatic memories. Research led by Richard L. Huganir, director of neuroscience at the School of Medicine, demonstrated a molecular mechanism for erasing fear, and could have application for treating posttraumatic stress disorder in humans. The research appeared in the October 28 edition of Science Express. —Dale Keiger

Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

Wholly Hopkins or a rapid heartbeat. The team concept has been embraced by more than 3,000 hospitals since 2004, when the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), a nonprofit organization that promotes what it considers best medical practices, recommended using RRTs as part of its 100,000 Lives Campaign to reduce preventable hospital

Bot t om Line

Number of Johns Hopkins fall 2010 sports teams that qualified for the NCAA championships. Men’s and women’s cross country and men’s and women’s soccer all had embarked on tournament play as Johns Hopkins Magazine went to press. Women enjoyed the best regular seasons, with soccer earning its sixth straight Centennial Conference title and cross country its third straight. Cross country then won its third straight NCAA regional championship as junior Cecilia Furlong (pictured) became the first individual NCAA regional champion in Hopkins history. The soccer team rolled up 16 wins against only three defeats, then won its first two NCAA tournament games to advance to the Sweet 16. Junior Erica Suter led the way with 13 goals by press time. On the men’s side, soccer lost in the conference semifinals but still earned an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament with a 13–3–4 record, then justified that bid by matching the women and qualifying for the men’s Sweet 16. Leading scorers at press time were junior Sean Coleman and senior Scott Bukoski, each with 11 goals. Men’s cross country finished third in the conference and seventh in the NCAA regionals. Finally, football will miss the national championship tournament this year, but won its final game to finish 7–3 and claim a share of the conference title. The penultimate regular season contest, a victory over Franklin & Marshall, marked the 1,000th game in Hopkins football history. —DK deaths. The 2004–2006 campaign enlisted some heavyweight participants, including the American Medical Association, the American Nursing Association, the Centers for Disease Control, the American Heart Association, and several large health care systems. But Bradford D. Winters, medical director of the adult neurosciences rapid response team at Johns Hopkins Hospital, warns, “We have to make sure we don’t rob Peter to pay Paul. You don’t want to diminish care for the intensive care patients by calling away staff [for 20 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

RRT duty].” Winters co-authored a study in 2006 that found that RRTs help to educate medical staffers in recognizing signs that a patient is going downhill. But his study also backed up Pronovost’s contention that evidence showing RRTs are better than other safety methods is sorely lacking. While patients can take a turn for the worse in any hospital unit, those who are in beds in the general ward often aren’t monitored enough to catch a crash early— hence the need for RRTs. “The nurses do fantastic work, but among the general hospital population, we’re not far from the days of Florence Nightingale,” Winters says. “We need better research as to what we should do to treat general ward patients better.” In addition to improving how staffs track patients, Pronovost and Litvak say hospitals and researchers should take a hard look at how intensive-care beds are managed, with an eye toward finding ways to keep some patients in ICUs for longer. Winters suggests that investing in wireless monitors would go far in catching early signs of an impending crash. But Pronovost argues that hospitals have no financial incentives to spend the money on such machines, even though they save lives. Hospitals often are not reimbursed by insurance companies for use of such equipment, so there is little short-term bottom-line benefit. Pronovost’s worries about hospital finances run even deeper: “One of the fears about health reform is that if we don’t reduce costs, we could see nurse staffing cut with the idea we could just form more RRTs instead.” The two authors wrote the JAMA article in response to ongoing efforts by IHI to promote RRTs. Pronovost sees his effort as counterbalancing much of the health marketing that touts RRTs’ purported value. Organizations cite the lives saved by RRTs, he says, but don’t consider how many patients needed the teams because of errors made in assessing their conditions and because of short staffing at hospitals. Donald Goldmann, senior vice president at IHI and a professor of pediatrics and public health at Harvard, says the group stands behind its campaign for RRTs and welcomes more research on the topic. “Hospitals should do more root-cause analysis to see whether some RRT response could be avoided,” he says. “I think [Pronovost] and I can agree that there are circumstances in which RRTs are appropriate.” “Rapid response teams certainly have a place,” says Pronovost. “The question is how big of one.” —MA

Scott Roberts

L i b ra r i e s

The Welch goes digital

t the William H. Welch Medical Library, staff members have been busy virtually disassembling the venerable medical library. To Nancy K. Roderer, the library’s future will have arrived when its shelves are empty, its books are gone, and its librarians have become “embedded informationists.” There will still be medical journals and books, but not in the standard, pull-it-down-fromthe-shelf sense. They will mostly be electronic documents stored on servers, with some books transferred to the Institute of the History of Medicine library on Welch’s top floor. For Roderer, the library’s director, emptying the Welch and closing its two remaining auxiliary sites will culminate a process that began in 2001 when library planners realized the day was coming when all medical journal articles and books would be available electronically. At that point, the library would transcend its walls—if you had a computer, wherever you were, the library would be there. Roderer recalls, “We said, ‘OK, if the library is wherever you are, what do you need a central point for? You don’t.’”

In 2004, the librarians-turned-informationists were assigned to leave the library and float among 10 departments each in the institutions served by the Welch—School of Medicine, School of Nursing, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Kennedy Krieger Institute, and Johns Hopkins Hospital. Next, the library began buying journals’ digital back issues, to build an electronic collection that could replace the print archive. Librarians and information technology specialists combined digital collections into easy-to-use databases. Finally, this year the staff began getting rid of books and print journals. Most of the discards are tossed into bright yellow fabric bins, the kind hospitals use for linens, says Sue Woodson, Welch’s associate director for collection services. When the bins are full, workers wheel them to a loading dock, and a truck hauls the volumes away to be recycled. Woodson says the Welch print collection will be cut from 300,000 volumes to between 50,000 and 100,000 volumes by the end of 2012. There will still be reference desks, but they will be located where the informationists are embedded in the various departments. Roderer plans to scale back the Welch’s hours and eventually close it. The building’s fate has not been

determined. It has an inner ring of eight concrete and steel stacks staggered among five outer floors, so repurposing it will be expensive. Welch’s transformation is partly in response to financial pressure, Roderer says. “The cost of library collections has been going up by at least 10 percent per year for so long you can hardly call it a crisis. Keeping paper takes money and space. We chose to get rid of the paper and reduce the footprint of the library. It’s happening to some [libraries] involuntarily. There have been just massive cuts in the last few years.” Roderer has reduced the Welch’s staff from about 100 employees to about 60 through attrition and retraining. “We will have no layoffs,” she says. “When two shelvers retire, we replace them with one informationist.” Roderer says that virtual libraries make sense in medicine because the field changes so fast that Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

Wholly Hopkins printed material quickly becomes obsolete. Most medical journals went electronic in the 1990s and have digitized back issues. If a patron needs a volume that isn’t digitized and is no longer at the Welch, informationists will turn to the extensive archive of books and journals at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland. That library’s collection is virtually complete, Woodson says, and where gaps do exist the Welch is helping to fill them by donating some surplus volumes. She points out that Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory has already gone virtual, and Stanford University’s School of Engineering is partway through the same transition. “Other libraries are moving in the direction, but a little bit more slowly.” Not everyone is enthusiastic about the changes. Simeon Margolis, a professor in Medicine’s Division of Endocrinology who has been at Hopkins since his undergraduate days, thinks online journals are convenient and he’s glad to have a librarian close at hand. But he misses browsing the library’s stacks, its opportunity for serenVirtual libraries make with dipity. “If you go to the library sense in medicine because you often find another book the field changes so that’s even more valuable fast that printed material and interesting than the first quickly becomes obsolete. one,” Margolis says. The Welch’s staffers email him journals’ tables of contents and he can request articles that pique his curiosity, but “it’s still not the same as having the journal in your hand,” he says, and asks, “How generalizable is this to other libraries? I think it is very useful for scientific things. But I find it hard to see how you would do this with sociology or philosophy or literature.” Woodson agrees. “It’s going to be different in the humanities. But in the medical setting, you want the latest stuff, you want it now, and it’s got to be right there.” She believes some users have visceral reactions to the notion of a library eliminating books. “I blame Ray Bradbury and Hitler,” she says. “People think of getting rid of books as being almost an immoral thing.” “It is a big change, and I understand that,” Roderer says. “But it has so many advantages, both for the users and financial, that I think it is likely to prevail.” —Heather Dewar 22 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

U n i ve r s i t y

Who got Johns’ house?

enry S. Cohn, A&S ’67, is a thorough reader. So when recently he finished the reissue of Helen Hopkins Thom’s biography Johns Hopkins: A Silhouette ( Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), he read the appendices. And there he encountered a mystery. The third chapter of Thom’s book, titled simply “Elizabeth,” concerns what may have been Johns Hopkins’ only true love, his first cousin Elizabeth. They wanted to marry, but her father, Johns’ uncle Gerard, forbade the union. Elizabeth and Johns remained close for the rest of his life—one of Elizabeth’s obituaries described them as “intimate associates”—and on page 28 Thom wrote, “In his will Johns Hopkins left Elizabeth the house in which she lived, which had come to him from his father’s estate, and was located at the northeast corner of St. Paul and Franklin streets.” What a nice end to a sad story. But Cohn, the thorough reader, didn’t stop at the book’s last page. He continued through to the book’s second appendix, which happened to be Hopkins’ last will and testament. “It was in the back of the book,” Cohn says, “and when I read it eight times I couldn’t find anything about Elizabeth. So I decided to look into it further.” When Cohn, a Connecticut superior court judge for the last 13 years, realized the record as established by Thom’s book—and a subsequent article written for Johns Hopkins Magazine in 1974 by then Hopkins archivist Kathryn Jacob, which repeated the story of the house—probably was incorrect, he began digging. He searched city directories, Gerard Hopkins’ and Johns Hopkins’ wills, deeds in the Maryland archives, maps of Baltimore, everything he could think of, and eventually worked his way to Francis P. O’Neill, reference librarian at the Maryland Historical Society. O’Neill sent him a detailed letter confirming that there was no evidence that the house at 21 Franklin Street ever was willed to Elizabeth. O’Neill said Hopkins instead may have sold it to some of the cousins, though “proof of this is lacking.” Current Hopkins archivist James Stimpert offers another theory: “One possible explanation is that Hopkins gave the house to [Elizabeth] prior to his death; perhaps she needed a place to live and Johns decided it wasn’t right to make her wait until his death before receiving what he intended to give her. If I remember correctly, Elizabeth isn’t mentioned in the will at all. Given that Hopkins went on for pages giving small sums and minor

items of property to relatives, acquaintances, former servants, etc., it would have been unusual for him to have given nothing to his cousin.” Says Cohn, “I just wanted to get the historical record correct, you know?” As to how Thom got it wrong, Cohn speculates that as a great-niece of Johns, she simply gave too much credence to family stories. “You get these family legends and they dominate things,” he says. “It just kind of snowballs.” —DK

Public Health

When humans stampede

pedes from the only sources available: media reports. Searching the LexisNexis database, Hsu and his team gathered accounts of 215 stam pedes worldwide between 1980 and 2007 that resulted in more than 7,000 deaths and twice that many injuries. Most events occurred in Africa and South Asia, with religious gatherings taking more lives than any other type of assemblage. The researchers found that despite efforts by the Saudis and others, stampedes are on the increase, particularly in developing countries where government officials have been reluctant to impose standards that could reduce the number of deaths and injuries. What Hsu’s study, the first stampede survey of its kind, did not find was information on how people behaved when panicked or what killed the victims. Data on the status of the injured at hospitals—even something as basic as an accurate count of fatalities—often doesn’t exist. Although there have been safety studies on the design of places where masses of people gather, there has been little investigative work from the perspective of public health. “There’s a lack of the kind of epidemiological data we need to help prevent these events, to figure out how to get to people who are hurt, and how to treat them once we do,” says Hsu, who has also investigated emergency responses to Hurricane Katrina

Bullit Marquez / ASsociated press

ach year, 3 million worshipers set out for the Muslim holy city of Mecca. The crowds at the annual Hajj pilgrimage become larger and larger as groups converge during the last legs of the trip, sometimes buckling elevated walkways and bridges. But there’s something besides their sheer numbers that threatens pilgrims: the actions of their fellow travelers. During the last 20 years, more than 2,500 Hajj participants were killed—crushed or trampled to death—after crowds panicked or became so excited they relentlessly pushed forward. Despite work by the Saudi Arabian government to widen roads and build better bridges in 2004, the Hajj still sometimes ends tragically for hundreds of people; more than 350 died just two years after the improvements. The horrifying regularity of such happenings, not just at the Hajj but other events worldwide, raises several questions. How do human stampedes begin? What conditions cause people to push forward? And what can be done to prevent deadly events? Those are questions scientists have not yet asked. Edbert Hsu, an associate professor in emergency medicine at the School of Medicine, addressed that situation in two papers published during the summer in the journals Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness and The Lancet. Hsu, SPH ’02, and others (including Yu-Hsiang Hsieh, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the School of Medicine) amassed information about human stam- Johns Hopkins researchers have found that human crushes are on the increase. Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

Wholly Hopkins

Books Sky watchers The Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a massive and costly stab at capturing a large chunk of the visible universe in one electronic catalog/database, pulled in a cadre of the best universespanning minds starting in the 1990s. Now “the Sloanies” (as they’ve dubbed themselves) have opened up the skies for exploration by millions of people of nearly a million galaxies. How they did it is a winding tale that science writer Ann Finkbeiner craftily details in A Grand and Bold Thing: An Extraordinary New Map of the Universe Ushering in a New Era of Discovery (Free Press, 2010). Years as a science writer cultivating sources had allowed Finkbeiner, A&S ’83 (MA), a visiting associate professor in the Krieger School’s Writing Seminars, entrée to a universe of deep scientific thought that had, by the late 1990s, become as hushed as The Great Beyond itself. “I had noticed that there were all these incred ibly talented people who had gone off the radar,” she says. “They stopped publishing—they’d just disappeared. I wondered what these burgeoning stars of astronomy were working on.” Her friend Alex Szalay, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins, tipped her to the survey, which she then delved into. Beginning with the story of the project’s visionary, Princeton scientist Jim Gunn, Finkbeiner explains the procedural and technical hurdles that dogged the Sloan’s development early on. As outspoken as he is brilliant, Gunn had been involved with an early version of the Hubble Space Telescope—the one that featured an incorrectly made mirror that dimmed the instrument’s value. Finkbeiner recounts this misadventure, but limns Gunn’s character and the Sloan saga without falling for the genius-looking-for-salvation cliché. The original idea of Gunn and others was not just to use images from one telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico to map the universe in three dimensions, but to involve amateur astronomers and other “regular people” in figuring out what all those images meant. By doing so, the Sloan would have 24 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

thousands of sky watchers or more who would help astron omers answer basic questions about the universe, such as how galaxies were formed and how far they are from each other. Since it came online in 2000, the Sloan’s mission has expanded to include a survey of the structure of the Milky Way and to identify supernovae that can be used to pin down the distances between bodies in space. Szalay, who lent his com puting and data storage knowhow to the project, exemplified the dedication that helped build it from the ground up, Finkbeiner says.“I was impressed by the altruism, the fact that so many of these talented people were putting aside their careers for this.” And she was impressed by their per severance. Scientists and technicians battled glitches, bureaucratic delays, and persistent worries over financing—impediments that made it seem as though all the work of those many shining astronomical stars could flame out to nothing. “They were always having technical problems,” Finkbeiner says. “I would see Alex and ask him, ‘What’s new?’ And he’d look crestfallen and say, ‘We just crashed again.’ ” If the task of the science writer is to make all this astronomical esoterica understandable without watering it down, Finkbeiner succeeds. She explains concepts such as redshift (the measurement astronomers use to determine how far away galaxies are) in clear, comprehensible language. She also brings to life the many players who developed the Apache Point telescope, worked out odd technical kinks, and secured the computing power with which to hold the survey’s millions of images. The Sloan now features 300,000 registered users worldwide. Many of them regularly tap into the survey via the Galaxy Zoo project (www.galaxyzoo.org), which enlists non-professional volunteers to help sort the immense number of objects recorded by the survey. Among these “citizen scientists” is a young elementary school teacher in Holland who has categorized a passel of celestial bodies in one distant galaxy by shape. Because of the Sloan, the universe is literally wide open to anyone with access to a computer.

Among the emerging BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) powerhouses, Brazil is the lone representative from the Western Hemisphere— and the likeliest among Latin nations to fulfill its rich potential. Now that the “sleeping giant” is fully awake, it has metamor phosed into an important trade partner for Asia, Europe, and the United States. Brazil’s ascendancy wasn’t engineered by capitalists alone, argues Riordan Roett in The New Brazil (Brookings Institution Press, 2010), an economic history that homes in on the effects policy has had on the country’s development. Roett, a professor and director of the Latin American Studies program at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, credits the country’s liberal government with developing and enforcing banking policies that controlled inflation, as well as focusing on reducing the poverty of tens of millions of Brazilians. A nation of about 200 million people, Brazil could also teach many developed countries a thing or two about moving toward energy independence, Roett says. Seemingly a universe away, the characters in the short stories in Jean McGarry’s eighth book of fiction, Ocean State (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), hearken back to days of manners, tender mer cies, and a languorousness that doesn’t always signal comfort. In her 13 stories, nearly all narrated in thirdperson omniscient voice, souls are rendered with an almost clinical detachment. You’ll find an exacting mother who witnesses the disintegration of her daughter’s marriage (“Family Happiness”) and a psychotherapist running through a workday (“Transference”). You’ll find little that echoes the clangorous, e-communication-dominated, politically charged landscape we live in now. McGarry, a professor in the Writing Seminars, is content to let her stories unfold in a rhythm that may not be contemporary, but falls well within the connotation of the term “writerly.” —MA

and several earthquakes. “We stand to learn a lot from studying these disasters.“ Hsu concedes that mass tramplings aren’t easy to investigate. Emergency personnel concentrate on treating the injured and getting them to hospitals, not analyzing and recording how they got hurt. Scientists can’t run randomized controlled trials to see which circumstances cause human stampedes and which do not. But the numbers he and his associates came up with cry out for more research, he says. Even Western societies that routinely develop crowdsafety measures exhibit a level of ignorance about the potential for crowd panic and resulting death tolls, he says. At a musical festival in Germany last July, 21 people were killed and 500 injured in an overcrowded tunnel leading to the concert. News reports indicate that organizers of the event planned for 800,000 people; more than 1.4 million showed up. “They couldn’t get a read on how many people were going to come through [the tunnel],” says Hsu. “That kind of crowd makes you question how medical workers would get through it to reach the injured, or what more could have been done to avoid the event.” Hsu says the next step for researchers is to figure out how humans behave when crammed together, why they panic or press forward compelled by anticipation of better concert seats or proximity to a religious leader, for example. Most of what scientists know about stampedes comes from anecdotal sources, which suggest that human psychology undergoes a change when people are forced into tight spaces, especially when about 10 people are crowded into one square meter—the equivalent of about 1,000 in a mid-sized classroom. Under such pressure, crowds tend to move as one and ignore alternate exits, accelerating the possibility of disaster. Many of those who die in stampedes perish standing up—crushed and unable to breathe. Hsu says the force of a crowd pushing in the same direction is staggering. Seven people moving at once can bend steel. “International health organizations have to recognize that this is an important type of disaster,” Hsu says. “If they made it a protocol to send someone to a trampling disaster quickly to see what happened, we would have detailed reports we could use to compare and contrast.” Ultimately, he’d like to see an international stampede database that would compile scientific information on each event. “Without it, we won’t really understand what we’re dealing with.” —MA Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

Public Health

Tanzania turns to the Muppets to help its kids

hen officials in Tanzania needed help to improve child literacy and public health, they turned to an array of scraggly characters with names like Teacher Gumbo, Zobi, Moshe, and Kami. All are Muppets—popular Sesame Workshop characters that have proved effective in teaching kids to read, count, and live healthier lives, according to new research out of the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Sesame Workshop produces programming in more than 120 countries. For Tanzania it helped produce Kilimani Sesame, a multimedia project meant to entertain and educate preschoolers. Dina L. G. Borzekowski, an associate professor in the Bloomberg School, helped plan the content, then studied the effects on literacy, numeracy, emotional and social development, and health and hygiene after 223 children were exposed to six weeks of Kilimani Sesame. “We got some really lovely results,” she says. The more exposure the preschoolers got to the special television episodes, storybooks, radio shows, and live action films, the more likely they were to say that it’s OK to invite an HIV-positive person to their homes, for example, and to know that they should sleep under mosquito nets to prevent malaria. Fighting the stigma of HIV infection emerged as a top public health priority when Borzekowski traveled to Tanzania in 2007 to interview local educators and health officials. Consequently,

Kami (left) and Zobi teach children health, hygiene, and tolerance.

26 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

the Muppet Kami, an orphan girl, is HIV positive. Borzekowski devised a new measure for receptivity during the project. The best gauge of how well the children received the messages was not just measuring their exposure, she found, but counting how many Muppet characters they could name. She recently evaluated a similar project in Indonesia. Traditional Indonesian puppets mixed with Sesame Street’s Muppets to focus on safety, cultural traditions, and environmental issues. Jalan Sesama has taught Indonesian children important lessons about things like seatbelt and helmet use, Borzekowski found. Those findings will appear in an upcoming issue of International Journal of Behavioral Development. Her Tanzania study was published in the June 25 issue of Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. For all its sweet characters and catchy jingles, Sesame Street has always relied on research to inform its content. Gerald Lesser, a Harvard psychologist and professor of education, helped create the program. He believed that it could offer educational programming, especially for preschoolers from disadvantaged backgrounds, while also entertaining them. Lesser served as Borzekowski’s doctoral adviser, shaping her research focus. “Content matters,” she says. “If you design culturally appropriate content, your message gets across. Kids are going to learn from media, so why not put it to good use?” — LW

Books of science and imagination Am I a Monkey? Six Big Questions about Evolution Francisco J. Ayala

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A Patient’s Guide to Heart Rhythm Problems Todd J. Cohen, M.D., F.A.C.C., F.H.R.S. “Anyone facing an invasive heart rhythm procedure must read this guide.” —Andrew Weil, M.D., New York Times bestselling author of Healthy Aging 978-0-8018-9775-7

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My Neck Hurts!

Nonsurgical Treatments for Neck and Upper Back Pain Martin T. Taylor, D.O., Ph.D. “An encyclopedia of relief for people with chronic neck pain.” —Joseph J. Ruane, D.O., Medical Director, McConnell Spine, Sport and Joint Center 978-0-8018-9666-8 $14.96 (reg. $19.95) paperback

Get Your Lower Back Pain under Control— and Get on with Life Anthony H. Guarino, M.D. Pain management specialist Dr. Anthony H. Guarino has created an accessible and up-todate guide to the range of available treatments to relieve back pain. 978-0-8018-9731-3

Kingdom of Ants

Death in a Small Package

José Celestino Mutis and the Dawn of Natural History in the New World Edward O. Wilson and José M. Gómez Durán Pulitzer Prize–winner Edward O. Wilson and Spanish natural history scholar José M. Gómez Durán weave a compelling, fast-paced story of ants on the march and the eighteenth-century scientist who followed them. 978-0-8018-9785-6

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A History William S. Dudley

Colm Tóibín on Henry James edited and with an introduction by Susan M. Grifﬁn

This rich history of Maryland’s waterways reveals how human enterprise has affected—and been affected by—the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.

This book collects, for the ﬁrst time, Colm Tóibín’s critical essays on Henry James. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his novel about James’s life, The Master, Tóibín brilliantly analyzes James from a novelist’s point of view. $18.75 (reg. $25.00) paperback

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Recounts how this ubiquitous agricultural disease came to be one of the deadliest and most feared biological weapons in the world.

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28 Johns Hopkins Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2010

Outbreak Agents Officers in the Epidemic Intelligence Service expend shoe leather and stamp out disease.

By Michael Anft Illustration by Stephanie Dalton Cowan

Johns Hopkins Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2010 29

very day for a month last summer, Cyrus Shahpar, A&S ’96, wilted in unending heat and humidity as the makeshift field hospitals and hotels he spent time in repeatedly lost power. As he shuttled from Islamabad to remote regions of Pakistan to search for eruptions of illness, he also worried about stumbling over exploding bombs planted by anti-government forces. Threats of violence led to restrictions that led to harried and uncertain travel. The month-long Ramadan holiday forced him to slow the work pace of a staff that couldn’t eat or drink during the daylight hours. Shahpar, until recently a chief resident in emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital, was shipped off to Pakistan in search of new outbreaks of cholera and other diseases that all too often accompany large-scale flooding, like the August deluges that inundated one-fifth of Pakistan, killed 2,000 of its people, and threatened the health of more than 20 million. Acting as an officer in the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), a branch within the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Shahpar trained local doctors to spot outbreaks, sent teams to investigate them once they were reported, and took samples in the field and sent them off to labs to check for the presence of disease—tasks that his residency couldn’t prepare him for. “The day-to-day work in an emergency like this is not like a typical workday,” he says. “We work longer, in more austere environments, and with more urgent goals. It is much like working in an emergency department in a hospital, but for weeks at a time.” Shahpar wasn’t just literally getting his feet wet. Like all EIS novices, many of whom had applied fresh out of medical school or residency, or who recently graduated with advanced degrees in public health, he was sent into the field on the heels of one mere month of training in July. His charge was to practice the epidemiological method known as “disease surveillance,” the science of tracking down outbreaks of illness as they happen in hopes of stopping them before they claim staggering numbers of victims. With plans to make public health a major part of his career post-EIS, Shahpar says the inconveniences— and the two-year commitment to the Service—come with the gig. “This has reaffirmed my interest in global health issues and the need for us to mount a global response to deal with them,” he says, adding that he’s looking forward to 22 more months of traveling around the world to deal with health crises head on. Like many of the 3,000-plus EIS officers who have come before him, Shahpar is more energized than petrified by the challenges presented by runaway diseases. During the EIS’s 50-year history, its doctors and alums have overtaken some of the most persistent global scourges, 30 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

stood watch over New York City after 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina–ravaged New Orleans, and gotten in front of hundreds of local illnesses that start in contaminated food, water, and air. Each officer earns $55,000–$75,000 per year but provides an immeasurable boon to health in the longer term, with nearly three out of four officers remaining at CDC or serving in local and state health departments in the United States after their EIS hitch is up. Their ubiquity has strengthened the approach to public health nationwide, sharpened the tools used to monitor outbreaks, and stepped up the response to the advent of new strains of disease around the world. And despite often plying their trade under harrowing circumstances, those who have taken the risks that come with stints in the EIS swathe memories of their time there in the warm mist of nostalgia. Many say they spent the best two years of their careers up to their elbows in mysterious diseases. “There was always something new, something going on,” says Bernard Guyer, professor emeritus of children’s health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and an EIS officer from 1972 to 1974. “The phone rang all the time with news of all kinds of potential outbreaks. It was great fun. I loved it.”

he idea of employing a blanket-like approach to epidemiology, mixed with a quick-and-dirty training program designed to see if new public health practitioners would sink or swim in the pathogen-riddled world, has its origins at Johns Hopkins University. Alexander Langmuir, then an associate professor at the Bloomberg School, conceived of the EIS and brought it into being in 1951, when he recruited a cadre of Johns Hopkins professors to teach the first few groups of cadets. Since those early days, the ties between Johns Hopkins and the Service have held fast. About a dozen and a half current faculty members in the School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School are EIS alumni. And 28 of the 164 members of the EIS class of 2010 are graduates of Johns Hopkins or have worked there, the highest representation of any university in the program. The EIS is particularly popular for Bloomberg School graduates who want to ply their trade, sometimes before getting a PhD or an MD. “I still heartily recommend the EIS to Hopkins students,” says Guyer. “It’s very hard for our master’s students to transition into a public health career. EIS gives them a chance to do that and learn about what they’re getting into.” That opportunity began with Langmuir. A dyslexic who read slowly, Alex Langmuir started his academic career by walking in the footsteps of his uncle, Irving Langmuir, a Nobel laureate in chemical physics. But young Alex couldn’t handle the advanced math while studying

physics at Harvard and migrated to public health, eventually teaching at Harvard and Johns Hopkins. While a professor at Hopkins in 1949, Langmuir was hired as a chief epidemiologist by CDC to fight malaria. The then new CDC (which at the time stood for the Communicable Disease Center) was headquartered in Atlanta so its investigators and physicians could be closer to malaria cases in the southeastern United States. But Langmuir discovered that the malaria program was a farce. Scientists who had claimed there were live cases of the disease, often because there were no other explanations for certain patients’ bouts with fever, had kept $7 million in grant money rolling in annually. Through blood tests and additional surveillance, Langmuir discovered stateside malaria had been virtually eliminated by 1942. Congress, among others, began to question the reasons for CDC’s existence. Around that same time,

Langmuir to include any local disease outbreak that states and localities needed help conquering. Prior to the advent of the EIS, the National Institutes of Health would send people into the field to investigate outbreaks. “But that was totally dependent upon the interest of the researcher,” says D.A. Henderson, a Distinguished Service Professor at the Bloomberg School who served in the EIS from 1955 to 1957, and who was Langmuir’s right-hand man during those years and several thereafter. (Henderson would go on to lead the successful effort to eradicate smallpox worldwide.) “Alex’s idea was to have a presence that would help states with epidemics and to keep an eye on what was out there. This was a group that was immediately available and on-call. Getting out there and responding to emergencies was key.” Langmuir’s brainchild is credited with invigorating the study and practice of public health, which had become

“There was a lot of thinking that treating infectious disease was on the way out because of antibiotics and vaccines.” Langmuir was advocating an epidemiology agency that could snuff out a particularly grisly aspect of the Cold War: the possibility that pathogens could be used in biological warfare. Langmuir twisted the arms of his superiors at CDC to start a program that would monitor possible bioterrorism from the East. (One scenario had the Chinese floating a pathogen-filled balloon under the radar and over the United States, where a timer would release the germs, infecting thousands of people.) His initial proposal was thwarted by higher-ups at the CDC, who were unsure of the need for a well-drilled group of “shoe-leather epidemiologists”—medical men who were equipped to search for diseases in populations. But Langmuir persevered. An outbreak of hemorrhagic fever among American troops serving in Korea won him the money he needed—even though the fever wasn’t due to bio-weapons, as was feared. The first class of EIS officers in 1951 consisted of 22 physicians and a sanitary engineer, taught by Langmuir and several Johns Hopkins colleagues. Although formed to guard against biological warfare, EIS had its purview expanded by

a wallflower of a profession in the years after World War II, and for giving state health departments a new sense of purpose. “It wasn’t exactly a popular occupation back then,” says Mark Pendergrast, author of Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010). “People who worked at the state level were hardly gogetters when it came to investigating diseases. And there was a lot of thinking that treating infectious disease was on the way out because of the development of antibiotics and vaccines.” The creation of the EIS may have done more than overcome that thinking. As the CDC searched for a mission to replace its apocryphal anti-malaria campaign, the EIS’s burgeoning reputation among state health commissioners and among public health professionals gave it a new sense of purpose. “If it had not been for Alex, there might not have been a CDC,” says Henderson. “It started out as a rinky-dink outfit that didn’t realize that malaria was done in the U.S. Now, countries around the world emulate it. Alex can take some credit for that.” Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 31

EIS Case Study: Measles

t was late on May 12, and Christina Khaokham’s e-mail was buzzing. A nurse at the San Diego County health department had just sent an urgent note about a potential case of measles. It echoed an e-mail Khaokham, Nurs ’04, ’08 (MS), SPH ‘08, had received earlier, one that also focused her full attention: An Epidemic Intelligence Service colleague stationed in Nebraska had asked whether there was any evidence of measles in San Diego. A young boy in Nebraska had exhibited the spotty rash, cough, and fever that mark the disease not long after his family spent vacation time in the city. Could he have caught it there? the colleague wanted to know. Even the possibility of a single case of the disease—which had infected as many as 4 million Americans and killed 450 each year before mass vaccinations during the 1950s and onward—pricked up Khaokham’s ears. She knew that measles had popped up and spread in San Diego County in 2008, when 12 children had become ill after a boy returned from a trip to Europe with the disease, then spread it among his unvaccinated schoolmates. Because the county is home to several religious groups that eschew inoculation and numerous parents who refuse vaccination based on the belief (despite a lack of scientific evidence) that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine can cause autism, Khaokham worried this could be the start of something big. “There was a possibility that this could be a huge outbreak,” says Khaokham, an EIS officer in San Diego since 2009. What’s more, the call from Nebraska evoked a particularly dark scenario: Could the cases in two states, separated by 1,500 miles, be part of the same outbreak, giving the disease a chance to spread through two different populations, and possibly beyond? When the case of the 6-year-old girl in San Diego was confirmed as measles early the next morning, Khaokham sprang into action. Using training she learned during her first month in the EIS, she helped form an investigative team to find out whether other unvaccinated children may have been exposed to the sick girl or her 3-year-old brother, who had also developed symptoms. Khaokham went to the boy’s daycare, which was based at a church. “I had to find out whether the kids played outside, whether they intermingled with kids from other age groups, whether each age group had its own bathroom,” she says. Caregivers were asked if they had been vaccinated. Meanwhile, other members of the team interviewed the children’s parents to learn where the children had been

32 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

and whom they had been around, and to find out when they first showed signs they were sick. Eventually, they took blood samples from the children. While interviewing the father, they discovered that the family had recently hosted a 24-year-old woman who performed as part of a religious touring group. That woman had suffered from a rash and a cough while staying in the family’s home before trekking with her group to Arizona and Mexico. Before visiting San Diego, the woman had spent time in the Philippines, where there was an ongoing outbreak of measles. “I talked with the tour manager and found out that the woman was unvaccinated as well,” says Khaokham. “I started doing whatever I could to see if the outbreak had traveled to Mexico.” She called health authorities in both places to see if they had any measles cases. Khaokham also scoured tour members’ public Facebook pages and blogs for signs of illness. Fortunately, she found none. In the meantime, the San Diego County health department issued alerts notifying the public and requiring unvaccinated children from the school and church daycare to stay home from school for two weeks after they were exposed. Within two weeks, the San Diego investigation was closed, with the outbreak limited to three cases. But Khaokham continued to work with her colleague in Nebraska on the circumstances behind that state’s four cases. “In EIS, we’re able to develop the information that allows us to see whether these localized outbreaks are related to larger ones around the world,” she says. Even though the affected families in both states had been carefully interviewed to see if their paths had somehow crossed in San Diego—“there didn’t appear to be any nexus,” Khaokham says—she wondered if they had forgotten an important detail that might have linked them and measles. She sent out lab specimens of the infected children’s blood for analysis and found that they suffered from the same basic type of measles, a subgroup labeled D9. It’s the same type that caused the eruption of measles cases in the Philippines. Ultimately, though, the case, like most in epidemiology, couldn’t be tied into a tidy little bundle. Khaokham concluded that while D9 was responsible in all cases, it was unlikely that the Nebraska and San Diego cases were related. “Even though those cases had a common ancestor, they were slightly different strains,” she says. The case was closed in August. —MA

The EIS would have hit the road running—except that the Korean War was raging and most medical school graduates were being ordered to serve in military hospitals, leaving the new agency short of recruits. A year later, on behalf of the EIS, the CDC persuaded the Pentagon to exempt would-be EIS officers from being sent to the front. For decades after, young medical men who would have been shipped off in fatigues were instead dispatched to CDC headquarters in Atlanta, or to local and state health departments to investigate diseases. They called themselves the Yellow Berets. Once in training, they got a crash course in Langmuirology. In teaching the rudiments of epidemiology, Langmuir honed disease surveillance to a fine art. Epidemiologists count infected people, he taught, and compare that number with that of a population, or in the case of some diseases, with a number of people usually infected at one time. Then they use division to find the extent of an outbreak. “Stripped to its basics,” Langmuir wrote, “epidemiology is simply a process of obtaining the appropriate numerator and denominator, determining a rate, and interpreting that rate.” He believed that the paramount questions epidemiologists in the field faced were: Who in a certain population was affected? When were people exposed to the thing that made them sick, and what was that thing? When did they become ill? Where did the epidemic happen? Along with indoctrinating his students on other facets of epidemic-sleuthing—biostatistics, disease control, how to properly use a lab—Langmuir placed a premium on publishing their findings in reputable journals, and with communicating with the media and the public during the course of an outbreak. He insisted that second-year EIS officers take part in “conferences” during which they’d tell tales from the field in a mere 10 minutes, to be followed by a grilling from faculty and newer EIS professionals. “I can spot when a former EIS person is presenting a paper or when I’m reading one right away,” says Pendergrast. “The style is distinctive. They use clear, declarative sentences. If the presentation takes 10 minutes and is airtight, it’s a dead giveaway.” The time-compressed delivery of information is an example of Langmuir’s belief that epidemiology is most effective when feverishly applied in the field, and not

when scientists comfortably ensconced in academia conjure elegant studies. He preached speed and thoroughness. Those who have followed his example have come to embody the EIS logo: a globe circumscribed with lines of latitude and longitude, and superimposed with a gumsoled shoe with a hole in the bottom. “I’m a shoe-leather epidemiologist because I’ve had to do it in the field over and over again,” says Noreen A. Hynes, SPH ’79, an associate professor of infectious diseases at the School of Medicine. Hynes served in the EIS from 1986 to 1988 but has investigated diseases—everything from flu outbreaks in the South Pacific to leprosy and diphtheria in Africa to syphilis in Baltimore—for much longer at the CDC. “There’s a big difference between academic epidemiology and applied epidemiology,” Hynes says. “In the academy, you have time to design and implement a study. You have a chance to aim at the center of the target, the bull’s-eye. At the CDC, you have to move

“I’m a shoe-leather epidemiologist because I’ve had to do it in the field over and over again.” quickly to identify the source and the risks. You’ll take just hitting the target. You don’t have the luxury during an outbreak of listeria in processed meats, when you’ve had several deaths and miscarriages, to develop a study. You just have to get as close to the target as you can.”

lmost from its beginning, the EIS has expanded its mission beyond tracking down, identifying, and containing epidemics. Even as Langmuir continued to send his troops into battle against infectious disease, those scientists would find more ways to apply his rules. Bob Mellins, an EIS officer investigating a suspected outbreak of encephalitis in St. Louis in 1952, instead found that many of the children were suffering, and sometimes dying, from lead poisoning. As a result, Mellins became the first EIS agent assigned to a noninfectious disease. A year later, he started the nation’s first poison control center. The reach extended even further. A decade later, Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 33

Langmuir started assigning men to investigate a special interest of his: population and human reproduction. Langmuir also started sending his men (they were all men back then) overseas. In 1958, he asked the State Department to allow EIS officers to investigate major eruptions of smallpox and cholera in what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). He was denied permission—until State got word that the Soviet Union would be sending in physicians. The EIS quickly became an operation of international significance. Today, about 70 percent of its officers investigate outbreaks and public health issues around the globe, as well as within the United States. By the 1960s and the Vietnam War, Langmuir could skim the cream from medical and public health schools as faculty advisers recommended that recent grads apply so as to avoid military service, recalls Henry Mosley, SPH ’65, professor emeritus of population, family, and reproductive health at the Bloomberg School. “I was looking to do some kind of alternate service. I applied to EIS, and D.A. Henderson interviewed me. It was very competitive back then, and I had the added trouble of my draft board back in Oklahoma breathing down my neck,” says Mosley, who was then serving as a medical resident at Johns Hopkins. “I was this close to heading off to war when I received a letter from the CDC on the day before my induction” into the Army. Mosley did EIS fieldwork in Indonesia and Kenya from 1961 to 1963. During one expedition to the Philippines, he tracked and documented the first known case of cholera transmission caused by seafood. People were eating uncooked shrimp called hipon at local bars and becoming ill, suffering the telltale bouts of debilitating diarrhea and dehydration. Through investigation, Mosley identified a vendor who sold shrimp caught in a lagoon rife with sewage, effectively ending the outbreak. “I had had no experience with cholera,” he says. “But very few of us who joined EIS had much experience in anything. We were clinicians.” Mosley bounced between CDC hitches in East Pakistan and several professorial and chair appointments at Johns Hopkins. He served two stints of six and nine years in Dhaka, Bangladesh, presiding over arguably the most significant moment in the history of treating cholera, which still infects up to 5 million people worldwide each year. Scientists at the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, which was co-founded in Dhaka by Mosley and currently maintains a partnership with Johns Hopkins, had discovered a way to replace the gallons of fluids cholera sufferers lose during the course of the disease. At the time, death rates could reach 50 percent. Since vaccines then were only effective half the time, devising a new treatment method was paramount. “The 34 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

problem with cholera patients is they need to replace water and salts, but you can’t give them just water and salts because the body won’t absorb them,” Mosley says. “You need to give them glucose as well to transport water and salt across membranes, including the gut. The trick was to find the right mix.” It was problematic enough that some patients taking part in trials of one similar mix in the Philippines had died. Perhaps because of those deaths, a clinical research director at the center wouldn’t allow trials of a new combination concocted by Mosley’s research colleagues to go on. Mosley, with Langmuir’s help, slyly circumnavigated the edict. At Mosley’s behest, Langmuir sent two additional EIS officers to help run the trials on 150 people in Dhaka. EIS personnel and the clinic’s researchers worked in the lab and in the clinic together in secret. “Basically, this was collusion between me and Langmuir,” Mosley says. “The other guy never realized we were running a clinical trial up there.” The astonishingly successful results of their trial led so-called oral rehydration therapy to become the new standard for treatment. During the war between East and West Pakistan in 1971, oral rehydration therapy saved thousands of lives of people in the refugee camps in neighboring India and soon-to-be Bangladesh, Mosley says. Nowadays, it is largely credited with reducing the disease’s death rate to around 1 percent. When a cyclone wiped out an East Pakistan island in the Bay of Bengal that year, Mosley and an EIS officer whom he had hired, Alfred Sommer, wrote an exhaustive paper on the extent of the damage, what help was needed to forestall the outbreak of disease, and how residents responded in the face of a dire emergency. “That investigation ended up being the longest paper ever published in The Lancet,” says Sommer, now associate dean and professor at the Bloomberg School. “It got the whole field of disaster epidemiology started.” After the war broke out, Sommer would work in refugee camps, vaccinating people to protect them from an outbreak of smallpox, publishing later that people exposed to the disease could be cured up to eight days after they became infected. He also performed large studies on the nutritional status of children and how such information could be used to predict mortality rates. “I was trained as an ophthalmologist, but I was really swayed by the idea of doing public health because of my time in the EIS,” says Sommer. If it weren’t for a post-EIS residency at Johns Hopkins’ Wilmer Eye Clinic, “I would have done disaster epidemiology. I remember doing my residency and, during rounds, the doctors were talking about the red eye of one patient. I thought, ‘I’ve been dealing with these large populations and publishing papers and you’re talking about one red eye?

What am I doing here?’” Sommer would get in the swing of things regarding his career choice, eventually combining his ophthalmology practice with public health. His subsequent studies in Indonesia led to a vitamin A supplementation treatment for infants that has saved millions of children in the developing world from blindness or death.

he “boys’ club” of yore is no more at the EIS. Even though the so-called doctor draft ended along with all conscription in 1973, the EIS had no trouble getting people to join. A lot of that is due to women, who have made up more than half of recent EIS classes and have often led the agency into new epidemiological areas of study. “Even without the Yellow Berets, the EIS has thrived,” says Pendergrast. “By the mid-1970s, there was a lot more

toward the EIS to get her career started. Having earned a medical degree in her native Romania before she came to Baltimore, she had written her dissertation on the use of emergency contraception in Ghana. “That taught me how much I can learn by being in the field,” she says. “I realized I could benefit even more by doing guided fieldwork, like what the EIS offers.” She joined the Service’s Division of Reproductive Health in July 2009. Within three months, she was in New York City as part of an EIS team investigating the effects of the H1N1 virus on pregnant patients at 30 hospitals. The team scoured hospital records and interviewed health practitioners and learned that expectant women were much more likely than other patients to suffer the virus’s effects. Many more of them ended up in intensive care units with their pregnancies in peril. Creanga was lead author of a paper published on the study in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology. The team

“I’ve been dealing with these large populations and you’re talking about one red eye? What am I doing here?” interest in public health than when it started. The EIS became known as an elite corps that would be a boon to any public health career.” Those careers were built in part on new methods devised to understand an ever-wider array of public health problems, such as chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes and obesity, and environmental pollution. So, even as the work of the EIS was central to the discoveries that aspirin caused Reye’s syndrome in children, certain tampons created the perfect environment for toxic shock syndrome, and early cases of AIDS in Los Angeles in 1980 were caused by a specific disease that ravaged the immune system, other EIS officers went to work tallying the costs of tobacco use in Georgia, the health damage caused by mercury poisoning from house paint and the effects of guns on youth mortality in the United States. Certain types of studies, including women’s health and reproduction, have become more prominent as more women have applied for and accepted EIS appointments. That focus led Andreea Creanga, SPH ’90 (PhD), to look

also presented its findings in the CDC’s house journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a once littleknown publication that Alex Langmuir had rescued from obscurity decades earlier. The papers recommended that physicians disavow the long-standing practice of avoiding the prescribing of anti-viral drugs for pregnant women, particularly ones who carry the H1N1 virus. “We recommended that they make changes in guidance,” she says, citing the term of art for how physicians advise their patients. Because of the findings, the CDC now recommends anti-virals for pregnant women—the sooner the better for H1N1 patients. “These weren’t the only papers published on this, but we got them out there really quickly,“ says Creanga. “This is what makes EIS a really amazing place to be. You’re more likely to see results from your work.” Results that have revolutionized the art and science of public health for half a century. Michael Anft is Johns Hopkins Magazine’s senior writer. Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 35

The

Force Is

with Her

By Margaret Guroff, A&S ’89 (MA)

t a judging of Emmy award nominees last August, Annelise Pruitt, A&S ’04, and her collaborator were the youngest people in the room. “Nobody knew who we were,” recalls Pruitt, designer of the website Star Wars Uncut (starwarsuncut.com). Their site had been nominated for an Emmy, but its chances were slim. It was just a hobby project, and they were competing against television networks, explains Pruitt, 28. The nominees in technical categories had been invited to evaluate each other’s work, based on their five-minute entry videos. When Pruitt’s video was screened, “people began laughing and clapping,” she recalls. “We were sitting in front, and the people behind us said, ‘I don’t know how they did that, but I’m going to vote for those people.’” Star Wars Uncut went on to win an Emmy for outstanding achievement in interactive media, beating sites for Fox’s Glee and Showtime’s Dexter. And, with the site’s design complete, Pruitt went on to the next challenge in a career marked by intense variety—and more than its share of come-from-behind victories. Pruitt arrived at Johns Hopkins in 2000, having abandoned the role of violin prodigy in her home state of Indiana. Having concentrated so much on her music, “I didn’t have the normal experiences of adolescence—after-school job, car, social life, time to myself,” she recalls. “I didn’t realize until 17 that there was a huge world out there to explore.” At Johns Hopkins, the softspoken young woman threw herself into that world, majoring in Writing Seminars and minoring in anthropology. “Her narratives were always odd and peculiarly inventive,” recalls screenwriter Marc Lapadula, who taught Pruitt in four writing classes. “You knew she was going places.” As a senior, Pruitt won the fellowship named for Meg Walsh, A&S ’84, 36 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

which financed a post-grad year of international travel and cross-cultural study. By the end of that year, “I was completely fascinated by material culture,” Pruitt recalls. “I could not unsee the way that commerce and art came together in the museum business, in the design business, in the fashion industry.” She went ahead with plans to study dramaturgy at Columbia but soon dropped out and applied to Parsons The New School for Design, also in New York. There, she earned a degree in fashion design, despite having no previous art training—or even previous sewing training. “It was a huge jump,” she recalls. “I went on the first day, and I had absolutely no idea what anyone was talking about.” Pruitt worked for designers Marc Jacobs and Ralph Lauren, segueing into freelance marketing after a company saw her fashion sketches online and invited her to create ads for them. Building her business, Pruitt learned as she went along. For her first print campaign, she recalls with a laugh, she had to plead with a magazine’s staff to teach her to get an ad’s specialized colors to print properly. In late 2009, Pruitt landed her current job as the senior designer at the news and opinion website The Daily Beast. Through acquaintances there, she met software developer Casey Pugh, and the two quickly became friends. “We both pride ourselves on being INTJs,” says Pugh, referring to the least common of the 16 personality types defined by the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator (Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judging). “Those are people who are very detail-oriented and technical, who pride themselves on their logic.”

Annelise Pruitt, A&S ’04, prefers to follow her curiosity wherever it leads. This year, it led her to website design— and an Emmy.

At the time, Pugh had recently launched the first version of Star Wars Uncut, an innovative site that slivers Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope into 473 segments and invites users to remake a snippet and upload it to the site. Visitors can watch the whole movie composed of these clever, sometimes goofy segments, which include cartoons, stop-motion animation, and live action. (Pugh’s own contributions include a scene in which he plays Luke Skywalker to a mustachioed male friend’s Princess Leia.) Pugh wanted to redesign what was then a basic site, and he turned to Pruitt. The two began meeting nightly after work, creating a livelier, slicker site that includes a pop-up video viewer, a timeline, and other professional touches. Pugh says it’s hard to describe Pruitt’s passion for the project. “‘Eager’ is not enough,” he says. “I thought I was a perfectionist, but I seem lazy compared to her.” After the redesign, Pruitt produced the team’s Emmy application, including the five-minute video that showcased the site’s innovations. Pruitt, who wears her hair in a platinum pixie, designed

and made her own dress for the August awards ceremony: a one-shouldered number striped in bronze. She brought her statuette home to her Park Slope studio apartment, where it sits on a slab of marble on the radiator, one of the few adornments in a home Pruitt hasn’t yet had time to decorate. The designer recently took a second job at a startup that delivers interactive advertising to mobile devices, and she and Pugh have also been hired to pitch website ideas to a major cable network. In her spare time, Pruitt is writing an interactive graphic science fiction novel. “I’m a big sci-fi nerd,” she says. If she ever has the money, she adds, she’d like to launch a fashion line. To some, Pruitt’s trajectory may seem scattered, but she says she doesn’t worry about charting a straight course; she just follows her curiosity where it leads. “I’ve always committed to whatever I’m interested in, without being afraid of losing what I’m leaving,” she says. “You have to do what the creative voice tells you is right.” Margaret Guroff is a magazine editor in Washington, D.C. Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 37

D.I.Y.

Opera

The collapse of a grand opera company does not mean the end of opera. A collection of energetic, enterprising Peabody graduates with a do-it-yourself spirit has seen to that.

rendan Cooke, Peab ’01 (MM), was live on the radio when he learned he no longer had a job with the Baltimore Opera Company. For 10 years, he had performed in the company’s chorus and the occasional secondary role: Jero in Rossini’s The Siege of Corinth, Crespel in Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman. The company was central to his singing career and cultural life. When Sheilah Kast, host of Maryland Morning on Baltimore public station WYPR, called him for an on-air chat in March 2009, he knew that Baltimore Opera had entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy months earlier, but he assumed management would reorganize the finances and carry on. Then Kast asked for his thoughts on the breaking news that the company had changed its bankruptcy to Chapter 7—dissolution. Listen to a recording of the interview and you can hear the shock in Cooke’s voice: “That’s the first I . . . uh . . . that’s the first I’m hearing of it. Oh my goodness. My thoughts are of complete and utter devastation. That company is the reason my wife and I live in Baltimore. I had no idea.” He had been under contract to sing in the chorus for a production of The Barber of Seville. Shortly after the company’s first announcement of filing for Chapter 11, which canceled the production, he had called some of his buddies with an idea. Why not do their own performance? “I was going to be in the [Baltimore Opera] chorus with 23 of my friends,” he says. “That chorus was like a second family. What were we going to do with all

38 ummer 38 JJohns ohns H Hopkins opkins M Magazine agazine • • SW inter 2010

of our nights in the spring?” As a member of the Engineer’s Club of Baltimore, Cooke had access to a venue, the ballroom of the Garrett-Jacobs Mansion, which the club owns. He and his friends could invite some people to listen as they sang Seville in a concert performance at the club. It might be a bit of informal fun and a sort of wake. They soon decided that performing Seville would look like an ill-tempered swipe at the Baltimore Opera. So they changed from Rossini to Mozart, from Seville to Don Giovanni. No sets, no costumes, no acting, just the singers, the music, and a pianist standing in for the orchestra. They pooled $750 of their own money to entice some guest performers, and Cooke began making calls. He says, “I looked at who were the best singers who owed me a favor, and what was in their repertoire. We threw together a cast for one performance.” As the Baltimore Concert Opera (BCO), they hurriedly built a website and sent out a few press releases. After newspapers picked up the story, “the phone just started ringing, which was a surprise to all of us.” A mere 12 days after Cooke learned of the Baltimore Opera’s final collapse, an overflow crowd took their seats in the Garrett-Jacobs ballroom. Prior to the concert, the singers had managed one rehearsal, and there were problems. “There were so many elements about this that none of us could know because we’d never done it before,” says Cooke. “The fact that we needed lights, what to do when the lights broke, how to project the supertitles. Who stands at which music stand—

By Dale Keiger Photos

Mike Ciesielski

we’d never thought of that, so people in the dress rehearsal were bumping into each other, or were not on the stage at the right time. Jason Hardy, who performed Leporello, was staying with me, and I got home that night and looked at him almost in tears because we had 300 people coming to this thing. I said, ‘Can you fix it?’ “He showed up an hour early the next day with Excel spreadsheets for everybody: ‘You go to this music stand on this measure number, and you do this.’ I watched and it looked like it had been rehearsed for months.” He adds, “I don’t remember much right before curtain. It was like, ‘Oh shit, here we go.’” The next day, Baltimore Sun music critic Tim Smith reviewed the performance on his blog, Clef Notes, calling it uneven but encouraging, with impressive singing by Hardy, Peab ’00 (MM), Peab ’04 (GAD), soprano Erika Juengst, Peab ’00 (MM), and baritone Michael Mayes. It was a mixed review, but a review, nevertheless, from the city’s most important music critic. There was nothing uneven about Cooke’s response to the evening: “It was the biggest high I’ve ever experienced in my life.”

Beth Stewart

Twenty-one months later, the Baltimore Concert Opera is incorporated as a nonprofit arts organization— insert here all jokes about “nonprofit opera” being a redundancy—with a board of directors, a $98,000 budget, and a second season of four operas in progress. It has a modest subscriber base and can afford to bring in singers, put them up for a week, and pay them $750 or $1,000. “They’re accustomed to making more,” Cooke says, “but in this economy, if they can fit it into their schedules people are happy for the work.” BCO has taken its place in a Baltimore cultural landscape now enlivened by a half-dozen opera ensembles, four of them founded since the Baltimore Opera’s demise and most of them suffused with graduates of Peabody Conservatory. Pick a week through May, and chances are good you can find a performance by Baltimore Concert Opera, American Opera Theater, Chesapeake Chamber Opera, Opera Vivente, Baltimore Opera Theatre, or the Figaro Project. For the 2010–2011 season, at least 37 performances crowd the calendar, and that does not count productions from Peabody Opera Theatre, Peabody Chamber Opera, and Peabody Opera Workshop. The Baltimore Opera is dead. Long live opera in Baltimore. he story of opera in American cities has become the most fascinating of the survival-of-the-performingarts narratives. Classical music, theater, and dance have their own existential dramas, but those can seem dry by comparison—fretful discussions about ominous demographic trends, wobbly finances, changing philanthropic priorities, and dwindling audiences. Opera is having a much livelier time of it. Several big-city grand opera companies foundered during the recession, but not because all the opera fans had expired or the creative energy of the artists had diminished. According to James Harp, former artistic administrator and chorus master of the Baltimore Opera, when the company folded it typically was playing to 85 percent of its theater’s capacity. Major companies are still commissioning, for six-figure fees, new full-length works from star composers like John Adams. On a Monday, grand opera crashes somewhere, and by Friday someone steps forward and begins laying plans to rev it back up. Chamber companies stage rarely performed works or scale down the familiar

T Caitlin Vincent

40 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

repertory and attract sustaining audiences. Young singers were just huge holes in the repertoire. I mean, Baltiwho can’t find jobs and stages on which to perform create more [Opera] almost never did Mozart. Baroque was their own, and discover that a surprising number of people nonexistent. You never saw Monteverdi or Handel outwill spend 20 bucks to sit on a church pew and watch local side the academic institutions. Even with 19th-century artists they may never have heard of perform with minimal opera, there was a sense of, ‘Oh, did Verdi write any staging and a piano player for accompaniment. other opera besides La Traviata and Aida?’” Opera These days, hanging around opera in Baltimore is Vivente now stages three operas per season at Baltifun. The singers perform with infectious brio, the promore’s Emmanuel Episcopal Church. ductions often exhibit an engaging irreverence, and About the time Cooke and his friends were laying the opportunities abound to see work that was never going groundwork for their second production in the spring of to be staged by the more traditional Baltimore Opera. 2009, Beth Stewart, Peab ’09 (GPD), was wrapping up work The fun has not been confined to Charm City. Harp, who on her graduate performance diploma and with her friends is the BCO’s one-man orchestra on piano, says, “In point wondering what was next. “We wanted to be in people’s of fact, entrepreneurial young graduates of music schools ears,” she says. For several months, they had been talking all over the country are putting together smallish opera about setting up their own concert performance. “And you endeavors so they can do what they want to do.” Boston know, beers lead to fantastic revelations, or so you think has the wonderfully named Guerilla Opera, plus Interat the time, so we decided we would do it. Things promezzo and the Boston Opera Collaborative. In California, gressed peaceably for about two weeks, then just got out there’s the small Long Beach Opera, and Cinnabar Opera of control.” By January 2010 they had formed a company, Theater in Petaluma, which performs in a 100-seat hall. christened the Chesapeake Concert Opera (it has since Opera Alterna stages new works in the District of Columchanged its name to Chesapeake Chamber Opera), and bia. Marc A. Scorca, president of the national service organization Opera America, says, “FreHanging around opera in Baltimore is fun. quently, these epicenters of creativity are cities where there are a number of universities and The singers perform with infectious brio, and conservatories, and a critical mass of singers, conductors, and directors who want to express productions exhibit an engaging irreverence. themselves through opera. They represent a kind of spontaneous creative energy that in my view is launched an ambitious (some might say nuttily ambitious) extremely exciting.” series of six performances, one per month, at Memorial The Baltimore ensembles can be sorted into niches. Episcopal Church in Baltimore’s Bolton Hill neighborhood, Cooke’s company performs mostly standard repertoire in where Stewart is a paid member of the church choir. She concert, just singers with piano accompaniment. Chesarecalls, “Because it was concert opera, we really thought peake Chamber Opera has positioned itself as the brash we could just sort of crank it out.” For the first show, there kid on the block; its promotional material invites the was no publicity, unless you count Stewart talking it up at public to hear “singers you won’t be able to afford in 10 Memorial services. On the designated night, the singers years.” American Opera Theater, directed by Tim Nelson, simply opened the church doors and hoped for the best, Peab ’04, is edgier, more avant-garde (and also performs fearing that maybe eight people would show up to listen. in Europe). The Figaro Project is another collection of Instead, they got about 45. By the end of its first season, energetic recent Peabody grads who love grand opera but the company was attracting more than a hundred custhink the art form needs some grassroots outreach by singtomers a night. Like Baltimore Concert Opera it has now ers doing not only modest, affordable productions of the incorporated as a nonprofit organization, and graduated operatic canon, but opera cabaret in Italian restaurants. Its to a 2010–2011 season of three staged chamber operas. most recent show, Divalicious, played Germano’s Trattoria Its just-completed production of Englebert Humperdinck’s in Baltimore’s Little Italy for $10 a seat. Germano’s got the Hansel and Gretel featured local singers as well as performfood-and-drink business, Figaro Project got the gate. ers from Utah, Connecticut, and Louisiana. John Bowen, Peab ’93 (DMA), founded Opera A third Peabody singer, Caitlin Vincent, Peab ’09 Vivente, a chamber opera that performs everything (MM), followed a path similar to Stewart’s. As an underin English and, at age 12, is the senior professional graduate history and literature major, she had already company in Baltimore. When he created the company, directed The Marriage of Figaro, which she calls “kind he felt that Baltimore had enough people who would of the chick lit of opera,” for the Dunster House Opera turn out for nontraditional opera performed in the Society at Harvard. As her graduate vocal study neared its vernacular in more intimate spaces. He says, “There end, she wanted to stay in Baltimore to continue workJohns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 41

ing with Peabody faculty. But she was worried about her future. “Baltimore Opera closed, and everything pretty much imploded with the recession and all of the arts funding going away, and I started to get really concerned that I’d have no place to sing,” she says. Several of her Peabody friends were in the same fix. “So I said, ‘What if we did a concert together?’ Then I was like, ‘Why don’t we do Figaro?’” She recruited 13 singers, signed on JoAnn Kulesza, music director of opera programs at Peabody, as conductor, and engaged pianist Michael Sheppard and the Carnelian String Quartet to accompany the singers. They shot a set of mock video interviews with characters from the opera to create an ultra-cheap YouTube publicity campaign. In May 2010, they performed their version of Figaro, called The Figaro Project, at the First Lutheran Church, near the Johns Hopkins Homewood campus. Vincent estimates they drew an audience of about 100, and she says they immediately regretted not having planned a second performance. Their 2010–2011 season as an ensemble (named after their first production) will include two cabaret performances and a night of new one-act operas by Paul Mathews, dean of student affairs at Peabody, and Peabody doctoral students Doug Buchanan and Joshua Bornfield. “I love grand opera,” Vincent says. “I love the experience of going to the big opera houses, but I can’t afford to go. It’s expensive, there’s an element of snobbery, and the audience is getting smaller and smaller because they’re getting older and older and dying out. With Figaro Project, what I’m trying to do is revitalize it, re-engage the youth, and show that opera doesn’t have to be done on a $4 million budget. It can be done for $1,500 in an entertaining and accessible way.”

$4 million budget. That’s roughly what the Metropolitan Opera in New York committed to its September production of Das Rheingold, first in a new staging of Wagner’s four-opera Ring Cycle that will cost the Met an estimated $16 million. You want grand opera? It’s going to cost you, both to produce and attend. Advocates like to point out that the Metropolitan Opera does sell $20 seats. In a New York Times article last February, the Met noted that about one-third of its seats for the upcoming season would sell for less than $100. Of course, that means two-thirds go for $100 or more, and even playing to many full houses at those prices, the Met has a $47 million deficit, in part because the recession smacked down its endowment by 26 percent, according to a recent analysis by Vanity Fair. Production costs have soared to the point where some major companies manage to recoup only about 25 percent of those costs from ticket sales. The rest has to come mostly from the generosity of philanthropic patrons. 42 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

Bowen of Opera Vivente believes everything has become too big: the opera houses themselves, the production costs, the big-time soloists’ fees. “I think the idea of the jetset superstar opera singer has to be rethought. You know, I think it’s lovely that Renee Fleming will go sing wherever someone writes a big enough check. But if you’re running a company, you have to ask yourself, ‘Am I really going to recoup Ms. Fleming’s $20,000-a-night fee?’” Tim Smith of the Sun appreciates the efforts of the new ensembles, but for him they don’t replace the Baltimore Opera. “I wouldn’t go to as many of these things as I do if I didn’t believe they were all worthy. [But] there’s still something missing. I’ve taken some flak from some of these companies when I write about the need to have grand opera back. They just think I’m dismissing all other opera forms. But that’s not it. It’s that I do miss the full orchestra, full sets, full chorus, singers who are fully competent in those roles, and soloists who are fully developed artists—the kind of thing you get out of a major company.” Shortly after the Baltimore Opera’s demise, the touring company Teatro Lirico D’Europa began staging grand operas at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre, performing as Baltimore Opera Theatre. Meanwhile, the Lyric Opera House, where Baltimore Opera had performed, created Lyric Opera Baltimore, a new organization with James Harp as artistic director and a mandate to collaborate with companies from cities like Indianapolis and Pittsburgh to stage large-scale Baltimore productions in 2011. He says, “What we want to accomplish here is really grand opera, the whole kit and caboodle with orchestra, chorus, principals, and ballet.” The Lyric plans to open its first season with La Traviata, followed by The Marriage of Figaro, then Faust.

altimore’s new opera babies have been sustained in large part by young artists who have the zeal, energy, and available time of youth. All are aware that they will eventually run out of all three, at which point their companies will be on sustainable business models, or gone. “The adventure part is probably good for a few years,” says Smith. “But I don’t see how you can go on forever. Every little step is so difficult. You can’t go far without angels stepping in and writing checks.” These little companies have none of the corporate support you will find for a major performing arts organization like the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Nelson, the founder of American Opera Theater, supports himself as a freelance opera director, working half the year in Europe, and supports his company almost entirely on gate receipts from performances. “We wanted part of our modus operandi to be that we do strange productions that expand the definition of what is opera,” he says.

“That doesn’t fit nicely into the little packet that a corporate sponsor wants. If you want to be the opera company that does not have the cocktail reception, there’s not much left for the corporate donor.” Says Cooke, “My marriage can’t survive another year of doing this for free.” He estimates that he spends 50 hours a week working on Baltimore Concert Opera business, on top of his day job as partner in a real estate company, on top of being the father of a toddler. As a business, his company has been savvy and alert. When the Baltimore Opera auctioned off its property, BCO bought all 45 sets of the company’s supertitles, which it now rents to other ensembles, bringing in about $3,500 last year. Baltimore Opera’s cubicles? BCO bought those too, and promptly resold them for a handsome profit. But Cooke says the company has to grow to where it can begin paying its staff. Both Vincent and Stewart have day jobs, the former as an academic program coordinator at Peabody, the latter as a research coordinator in the School of Medicine’s Pediatric Pulmonary Division. Vincent says, “I don’t necessarily expect Figaro Project to go on for 10 or 15 years. I want it to go on for as long as I know people who love to sing and want to make music and need performance opportunities. In an ideal world, I’d like to think that it’s just twiddling our thumbs until people can afford to revitalize the arts. If that’s not the case, Figaro Project and companies like it will morph into something else. We’ll have to mature and get a board and more of a foundation. For now it’s just important to keep something alive. I have the energy, so let’s do it.” Harp has been around opera longer than any of them, and he says, “The assurance of economic surety for artists is not great. We love what we do. We can’t live unless we do it. But we are looking at ways to reinvent ourselves to be able to have our art but also have a life and pay our bills. Nobody will be able to make big bucks from this, and that’s not bad as long as we are able to piece together a living.” There does not seem to be a shortage of people willing to try. At least a dozen times, says Cooke, he has answered the phone to find the person on the other end calling for advice. How, exactly, does one go about establishing a new opera company?

Brendan Cooke

Dale Keiger is associate editor of Johns Hopkins Magazine. Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 43

Atoms, Genes, and Everything In Between An incomparable collection of rare books at the Sheridan Libraries traces the arc of scientific thought. By Michael Anft P h otos

or the last 25 years of his life, Elliott Hinkes, A&S ’64, Med ’67, fed a ravenous appetite for the history of knowledge by collecting more than 300 rare books, pamphlets, and articles of science. An oncologist in Los Angeles, Hinkes grew to be as much a student of the works of scientific masters as an amasser of them. When he began to suffer from cancer himself, Hinkes reduced his patient load and signed up for graduate science courses. “I now find myself taking a number of astronomy and physics courses at UCLA to keep up with my collection, all of which has been a good way to stay young,” he wrote in an introduction to an exhibit of his books, held at the Eisenhower Library in 2004. Hinkes succumbed to his disease in November of last year, leaving his trove of books to the Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins. The Hinkes Collection ranks as one of the foremost gatherings of science books in the world, valued at $2 million, and as one of the largest ever amassed by one individual. “The collection is a mirror of what Elliott Hinkes valued and thought about,” says Earle Havens, curator of early books and manuscripts at the Sheridan Libraries. The collector was also fastidious about what he bought, Havens adds: “He was one of the few collectors to purchase complete, first edition texts that were in especially fine shape.” Each volume lays out time-tested theories; most deal with the workings of the universe. But the collection presents viewers with a narrative arc that traces the history of applied reason. “As a scholar of modern science, these books constitute my research lab,” says Maria M. Portuondo, an assistant professor of the history of science and technology at the Krieger School. “They represent the whole sweep of science during the era of printing and even before.” The scientific godfathers of the Enlightenment make up the collection’s bulk, but it also includes works by 44 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

W ill K irk

ancient Greeks—Archimedes’ writings on mathematics, Aristotle’s musings on the heavens, and Euclid’s Elements of Geometry. Modern genius is well represented, too. Fourteen books or original offprints of journal papers by Einstein, including some of his works on relativity, are included, as are a handful of writings by astronomer Edwin Hubble, including a first edition of 1936’s Realm of the Nebulae inscribed by the author to novelist Anita Loos. “What’s great about this collection is that you not only see the development of science but the development of the technology of publishing,” adds Havens. “We’re teaching the history of ideas by using these books. We’re able to show students how knowledge was disseminated.” For him and others charged with finding meaning in the Hinkes Collection, subtext and context vie with the science for attention. There are stories behind the stories, including the sad tale of Antoine Lavoisier, who wrote the first comprehensive primer on chemistry, then was guillotined during the Reign of Terror. Or the underlying flavor of Benjamin Franklin’s 1760–1764 writings on electricity, in which Portuondo can almost taste an era. “The Enlightenment character is in there, in a no-nonsense, very American way,” she notes. “It says, ‘Anyone can try these experiments.’” The Sheridan Libraries will use the books to help teach undergrads about the march of science. It hopes to present a major exhibit of Hinkes’ dogged pursuit of history sometime in the fall of 2011 at the Peabody Conservatory’s library, to honor his widow and son. “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them,” Galileo once said. The Dr. Elliott and Eileen Hinkes Collection of Books of Scientific Discovery affords its viewers a chance to rediscover those truths straight from the minds that proved them, and to muse over the settings in which each of them happened. Here is a small sampling.

Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr, Atlas Coelestis (Celestial Atlas), 1742

he ornate, colorful map of the stars put together by Doppelmayr, a physicist, astronomer, and professor of mathematics in Germany, is the Hinkes Collection’s display piece, its museum offering. That’s largely because as much as the book includes several competing views of the cosmos held at the time—ancient astrology side by side with the sober astronomy of Tycho Brahe, Nicolaus Copernicus, and others—it also qualifies as a work of art. To supplement the

dozens of detailed astronomical plates Doppelmayr had prepared, the book’s publisher included classic, colorful renditions of gods and goddesses, cherubs and other mythic creatures, and famous scientists and their observatories. “They hired an artist to paint everything,” says Havens. “My guess is there were no more than 1,000 copies of this made at the time. Before the age of mass production, books were rare as soon as they were published.” Perhaps because of the presence of art, not everything in the atlas is the product of reason. Cherubs

playing with a telescope are looking not at the stars but at an elegant rendering of Diana, the Roman goddess of the moon. “There’s this playful element to it,” says Havens. Not that the import of its science should be overlooked. The book, with its various theories competing for space, reflects “the era of natural philosophy,” Havens says. “This was what was happening then, this conversation about what was possible. This humanistic, not purely scientific perspective of the universe was still alive.”

Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 45

Aristotle, De Caelo (On the Heavens), published in 1495

third edition of a copy modified by St. Thomas Aquinas hearkens to 330 B.C., when Aristotle posited that there was evidence of a round Earth. This artifact includes some manuscript notes hand-scribbled in the margins by a previous owner, as well as Aquinas’ medieval commentary surrounding Aristotle’s ancient Greek text. Aristotle observed that seafarers traveling south saw the southern constellations rise above the horizon instead of staying on the same plane, as would be expected

46 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

if the horizon were flat. What’s more, he noted, Earth’s shadow on the moon during lunar eclipses always has rounded edges, more evidence of a spherical Earth. Aristotle also foresaw there must have been an event—what we now know as the Big Bang—that set the universe in motion, something he termed a “prime mover.” Fixed stars were, in fact, part of a system that was constantly moving, and had been since the beginning of time. Aquinas thought that the “prime movers” behind the heavens were angels, making Aristotle’s observations suitable for the

Vatican. The Hinkes Collection’s other Greek offerings, adapted during the era of printing, also tell historians a lot about how people viewed science and reason. A 1570 copy of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry published in London includes a preface written by polymath John Dee. Using a foldout page, Dee attempts to put all the knowledge of nature onto one sheet of paper. “That was the ambition of the Renaissance scholar,” says Havens. “John Dee was emblematic of the idea that one man could understand everything about everything.”

Galileo Galilei, Istoria e Dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari e loro accidenti (History and Demonstrations Concerning Sunspots and Their Properties), 1613

inkes, writing in a catalog for the 2004 exhibit, noted that Istoria was the book that began to fundamentally turn science in a Copernican, heliocentric direction. Galileo’s observations “helped to convince the scientific community that Copernicus’ and [Johannes] Kepler’s harmony of the cosmos was close to the truth,” he wrote. The first edition, published in Rome, is one of three Galilean works in the collection. Its printers used a then emerging etching process that exposed copper plate

to acid, allowing for levels of detail that were essential to accurately reproducing what Galileo saw through his telescope. The book was likely owned by a “poor scholar,” says Havens. It is bound by animal skin—a sign, perhaps, that the intellectual could afford an expensive book written for a small audience of learned people, but not expert leather binding. “It was expensive to be a scholar in those days,” Havens adds. The text lays out Galileo’s belief that the geocentric concepts of Aristotle and Ptolemy could be thoroughly disproved. An experimenter long before

the book’s publication, Galileo had discovered the moons of Jupiter and noted that they orbited around that planet and not Earth, counter to the Aristotelian model. Istoria “is where he started making public his views on heliocentrism,” says Portuondo. “It started him off on the path to further discovery, but also toward the censors of the Vatican.” After Istoria, Galileo progressed to more controversial treatises that led him to recant proven fact. He died 28 years after Istoria was published, after living for several years under house arrest.

Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 47

Sir Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), 1687

n his seminal treatise on gravitation, known among bibliophiles simply as “The Principia,” Newton put forth the idea that the Earth and the heavens are subject to the same laws, completely overturning distinctions made by Aristotle. “Some people would say this is the beginning of modern science because of that unification involving gravity,” says Portuondo. “Newton showed the value of using mathematical models to work out natural laws.” But he hadn’t yet unveiled the calculus he created to develop those laws—a necessity for getting through his

48 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

tough science problems. This particular copy, a first edition published and authorized by British diarist Samuel Pepys, was originally owned by someone named Jacob Burn. “He probably didn’t read it—because he couldn’t easily do the problems without a firm understanding of Newton’s calculus,” says Havens, who plans to do some investigation to learn more about the book owner. “I want to know who Jacob Burn was. This is detective work. You literally have to take out your magnifying glass to find clues as to who the owners of these books were. I’ll go through the alumni

directories for Oxford and Cambridge to see if there is any discernible connection between him and Newton. Was he a friend of Newton’s? Did he have an office near his at Cambridge?” Establishing provenance does more than nail down who bought a book and when. It can tie the book to a place and time and give historians an idea of how it was originally used. Even without more information on Burn as of yet, this copy represents “perhaps the rarest and certainly the most valuable volume in the collection,” Havens says. “It’s already known as ‘The Hinkes Principia.’ ”

James D. Watson and Francis Crick, “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,” Nature, April 25, 1953

ritish researchers James D. Watson and Francis Crick weren’t the first to identify DNA—the existence of the basic element of all life had been intuited by scientists going back almost a century. But they were the first to correctly repor t the spiral staircase–like double helix structure of the DNA molecule, in three 1953 ar ticles in the journal Nature. The first one kick-

started the field of genetic medicine and ultimately led to the sequencing of the human genome in 2003 (an effort led by Watson, whose genome was sequenced in 2007)—they were rewarded with the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1962. Although the pamphlet-ish journals the duo’s papers were published in are as stylistically bland as appliance manuals, their form tells us a lot about the progress of science. Those early

works of natural philosophy—tomes that aimed to impar t all of the world’s knowledge in one book or one foldout flow char t—had given way to the atomization of inquiry. “ Instead of the great big cosmos, [Watson and Crick] were looking at the building blocks of life,” says Por tuondo. “And look at the context: They’re giving us this incredible breakthrough, and how is it presented? It’s just another article in Nature.” Michael Anft is senior writer for Johns Hopkins Magazine.

Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 49

A New Kind of For faculty at the SAIS Bologna Center, the war in Afghanistan is a case study of what not to do in an ethnic confict. By Jay Pridmore 50 Johns Hopkins Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2010

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War N

early a decade after the United States thought it had toppled the bad guys in Afghanistan, American military and government officials are still dealing with warlords, jihadists, drug traffickers, and extortionists. And those are just the Americans’ Afghan allies. A rampantly corrupt government still does not exert political control over much of the country. The Taliban have stepped back into that vacuum, and their resurgence has prompted many ethnic Afghan militias to rearm. A long sequence of miscalculations has left the United States with seemingly nothing but bad options for years to come.

Welcome to the future, says Erik Jones, SAIS Bol ’89 (Dipl), SAIS ’90, ’96 (PhD), professor at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies’ Bologna Center. Afghanistan is not alone as a place where tensions among ethnic, tribal, and religious groups can erupt into chaos, and often do. The kind of war the United States and NATO have been fighting in Afghanistan may be typical of those the world will face in the 21st century. Jones and some of his Bologna Center colleagues have been working for more than a year to implement a new ethnic conflict studies initiative. Funded by Jack Wasserman, SAIS Bol ’64 (Cert), his wife, Carol, and the Wendy’s/Arby’s Group Foundation, the initiative aims at understanding how ethnic factors figure into what international affairs experts say is the present face of war—intrastate conflicts that involve a collapse of civil society and mass mobilization of ethnic groups. Writing in the International Journal on World Peace, Muzaffer Ercan Yilmaz of Balikesir University in Turkey noted that from May 1988, when the Cold War was ending, to 2007, the United Nations intervened in 44 intrastate conflicts. “Many of today’s conflicts have origins in tribal or religious differences,” says Kenneth Keller, Engr ’63 (MSE), ’64 (PhD), director of the Bologna Center. “We’re looking at what causes these differences to grow into conflicts, to what extent can one generalize about causes, and how escalation might be avoided.” Global powers like the United States need to approach these wars first by grasping new realities. “Traditional wars involved state-to-state conflict,” Jones says. “[Now] we’re less concerned with state-to-state conflict than we are with the hostilities and violence that grow out of failed states.” SAIS faculty who analyze various aspects of these conflicts believe that Afghanistan offers a case study in what not to do when searching for a peaceful solution to intrastate conflict. The United States and its NATO allies,

they argue, bungled the effort from start to finish—supporting corrupt and reviled warlords, paying scant attention to building the rule of law, undermining an international peacekeeping effort, closing their eyes to Pakistani support for the Taliban, and failing to pay attention to hidden economies that can make the prolongation of warfare serve the financial interests of some of the antagonists. “Now [the allies] haven’t a clue about what to do there,” says Francesc Vendrell, an adjunct professor of international relations who teaches conflict mediation and dispute resolution at the Bologna Center. Vendrell is a former personal representative of the United Nations secretary-general, as well as a former special representative of the European Union for Afghanistan. The first mistake, Vendrell argues, was backing the wrong people. In 2000 and 2001, he was a U.N. envoy seeking a peaceful resolution to the civil war then battering Afghanistan. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had charged Vendrell with doing what he could to end the violence between the fundamentalist Taliban, who had taken control of much of the country in 1996, and the Northern Alliance, a loose coalition of defiant ethnic groups, including Hazaras, Uzbeks, Turkmen, and Tajiks, that controlled some areas of Afghanistan’s northeast provinces. Pre-Taliban, these groups had fought among themselves in what amounted to gang wars for land and drug profits. But opposition to the Taliban had, at least for a time, united them. As part of his effort, Vendrell cultivated the Northern Alliance’s leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud. Massoud, a Tajik, was called the “Lion of Panjshir” for his fierce resistance to the Soviet army that occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s. He was one Afghan leader that the West felt it could work with. He had attended secondary school in France, studied engineering at Kabul Polytechnic, and served for a time in Kabul as Afghanistan’s defense minister in the first post-Soviet government, which was dominated by Tajiks. After the Taliban, Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 51

istockphoto.com (both)

mostly Pathans and hard-line Islamists, seized control of the capital and most of the country in 1996, Massoud fled to the Panjshir Valley but expressed a willingness to work with the Taliban to create a settlement. Vendrell, as the U.N. envoy, hoped a peaceful solution might emerge. On September 9, 2001, a pair of al Qaeda suicide bombers disguised as journalists triggered a bomb hidden in a video camera, killing Massoud. Two days later, al Qaeda terrorists brought down the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon. Vendrell maintains that it is here that the West missed a crucial opportunity. He explains that the whole world knew the Taliban would be toppled for their alliance with al Qaeda, making this an opportunity to install a new Afghan government. Vendrell believes that government should have included the exiled king of Afghanistan, Mohammed Zahir Shah, who had previously tried to introduce democratic reforms before his reign ended in 1973. That didn’t happen. In October, U.S. and British military forces assisted the Northern Alliance in an offensive that ousted the Taliban. The U.S. government then threw its support behind some of the same warlords, Vendrell says, “who had destroyed Afghanistan in the 1990s. Now they were brought back to power as min52 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

isters, governors, and police chiefs.” Francesco Strazzari, SAIS Bol ’96 (Dipl), adjunct professor of international relations at the Bologna Center and a conflict management specialist, observes that in the aftermath of the successful military campaign, the victors failed to organize a proper peace conference. Instead, they tried to impose a “peace of the winners” that left significant segments of Afghan society—secular and republican factions, for example, and Taliban not linked to al Qaeda—simply defeated and without representation. Strazzari adds that the short-term, pragmatic military decision to bolster militias run by discredited warlords turned into a long-term political strategy. Why the U.S.-led coalition chose some of the worst candidates to govern is unclear to Vendrell. One possible answer, he says, is that the Bush administration had no interest in nation building and soon became distracted by Iraq. In any case, Vendrell notes, a vital opportunity was squandered. “These windows rarely open twice,” he says. Another disappointment for Vendrell was that the international community failed in the

timing, nature, and scale of an effective peacekeeping operation—another big mistake. The United Nations opted for a “light footprint,” he says, even though the Afghan people were ready for a heavier U.N. involvement in rebuilding the country. No one thought that would be easy. Peacekeeping is a complicated and fragile process, says Winrich Kühne, a professor of international relations with extensive experience of multinational peacekeeping missions in Africa, the Balkans, and other regions; he worked on the first free and fair elections in South Africa in 1994. Generally speaking, peacekeeping operations enter a conflict zone with the objective of getting antagonists to set enmities aside out of fear, respect, or both. “What you must use is a mix of dialogue, force to create a secure environment, and peacebuilding elements,” Kühne says. The U.N. Security Council initially sent a “stabilization” mission, called the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), only into Kabul, neglecting the rest of the country for two years while U.S. and allied troops fought the Taliban and al Qaeda. In 2003, a growing number of troops under the ISAF umbrella began expanding peacekeeping operations beyond Kabul, but by 2006, notes Strazzari, ISAF “peacekeeping” forces were engaged in combat with the Taliban and militias loyal to them in the provinces. Another mistake, says Kühne: “This war violated a wellestablished lesson that one should not conduct a peace and stabilization operation in parallel [with combat operations]. It also alienated the Afghan population. “The Western intervention in Afghanistan was so misconceived from the beginning,” Kühne continues. “A further profound misconception of the West was that it

would be possible to build up a functioning Afghan army and police force in a few years, although Vietnam already had proven that this is not feasible.” Yet another mistake, say the SAIS experts, is that those steering U.S. policy in Afghanistan have failed to recognize that organized crime and ethnic conflict make excellent bedfellows. Strazzari has studied the hidden economies that underlie small but ferocious wars. He has mapped how criminal networks benefit from political turmoil. Strazzari was a student in the 1990s at the University of Bologna, the oldest university in Europe, just a few steps from the Bologna Center. When Yugoslavia fell apart in paroxysms of violence and ethnic cleansing, he turned his attention there. He and some friends made regular trips through the war-torn nation, making contact with student organizations, discussing politics, and bringing in basic supplies like fax machines and paper. Moving in and out of Sarajevo, Strazzari observed the routine paying of bribes at Serb, Croatian, and Bosnian checkpoints, and how humanitarian aid fueled a large black market “that had to do

with the bare survival of the many and the enrichment of the few.” Stalemate proved to be a profitable situation for some factions in the conflict. He says, “A host of armed entrepreneurs made deals at night and thrived on shadow economies.” During the Balkan turmoil, says Strazzari, the amount of heroin that passed through the ex-Yugoslav republics to Western Europe had a major destabilizing impact and lasting consequences for the emerging political systems. He sees analogies to Afghanistan. “You can’t understand Afghanistan if you don’t understand the warlords,” he says, noting that many of them have profited from the lucrative heroin trade that has burgeoned in their territories during years of warfare. “It is difficult to fight illicit economies when they are linked to the same militiamen who have been made, one way or another, a building block of the stabilization effort,” Strazzari adds. Vendrell’s boots-on-the-ground perspective matches Strazzari’s. As an example, he points to one of the more prominent militia leaders at the moment, the warlord Matiullah Khan, an illiterate Pashtun who opposed the

Five Bologna Center faculty have contributed to the ethnic conflict studies initiative. From left: Erik Jones studies political economy, which means, he says, “I try to answer questions about how politics influences economics and economics influences politics.” Francesc Vendrell has had a 40-year diplomatic career, including 34 years with the United Nations; he holds the Order of Wazir Akhbar Khan from Afghanistan. Bologna Center director Kenneth

Taliban with armed followers south of Kabul. Though a suspected kingpin in the opium trade, he got a lucrative deal: As reported by Dexter Filkins in June in The New York Times, the NATO military pays him a reported $2.5 million a month to keep open for NATO convoys the highway between Kandahar and Tirin Kot, site of a U.S. Special Forces base. The highway had been subject to frequent Taliban attack. Now Matiullah can charge NATO $1,200 per truck for safe passage. If peace were to come to his province, Matiullah would lose that income, which he claims now helps to support 15,000 people. Several costly mistakes, say the SAIS experts. The ultimate resolution? They believe probably some kind of agreement forged among Karzai, the warlords, and the Taliban. “People say you have to be inclusive to find a way to peace,” Kühne says. “That may be so, but if you just bring in the crooks, the criminals, and the terrorists, what have you been fighting for anyway?” Jay Pridmore is a freelance writer based in Chicago.

H. Keller is an engineer who studies science and technology policy; he’s also the former president of the University of Minnesota. Winrich Kühne researches and teaches international development, nation building, and peacekeeping; he is founding director of the German Center for International Peace Operations. Francesco Strazzari has written extensively on corruption and international crime, as well as European security.

Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 53

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Will Kirk / homewoodphoto.jhu.edu

On August 31, the School of Nursing celebrated the end of renovations linking the courtyards and gardens of all three nursing buildings. By joining the courtyard of the Pinkard Building, the main academic building, with the gardens of the newly renovated SON House and the Student House, home to the registrar’s office and the student

lounge area, landscapers created a much-needed space for relaxation and recreation on the East Baltimore campus. Alumni, faculty, staff, and students—including Jamison Litten, Nurs ’11, pictured below—tossed beach balls and beanbags, hula-hooped, and dug into “dirt cake” to mark the occasion.

56 57 58 58 60 63

Hope for a Good Day Happy Town Cut, Rattle, and Roll Nurses Where There’s Need Mentors Among Us Alumni Notes

Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 55

News & Notes

from our graduates and friends

SCD. At the onset of symptoms—acute swelling of the hands and feet that begins around 6 months of age—doctors and nurses focus on helping the baby. But as the child ages, there are fewer such visible symptoms and no objective measure of pain, and providers, who must rely on patients asking for specific and large doses of narcotics, often suspect that patients are exaggerating or lying to get access to the drugs. SCD, a genetic disorder in which misshapen red blood cells restrict blood flow and deprive the body of sufficient oxygen levels, affects as many as 100,000 Americans, primarily African Americans. Thirty years ago, most people with SCD did not live past childhood. Now that advanced treatment options allow these patients to live into their 40s, relieving their suffering and improving their quality of life is that much more important. “We need to focus on improving the continuum of care [from childhood to adulthood] and improving the quality of life to help people live well every day,” says Cynda Rushton, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. Rushton and Haywood, along with Mary Catherine Beach, SPH ’99, ’02 (PDF), and Gail Geller, SPH ’79, ’89 (ScD), recently received a $1 million, two-year, elite Challenge Grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a training program to integrate palliative care—a medical specialty focused on relieving pain and symptoms and improving overall quality of life for patients with serious illnesses—into the treatment of children with SCD and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. (Duchenne MD, which affects only boys, is another chronic, inherited, life-threatening illness.) The researchers—all members of the core faculty at the Berman Institute of Bioethics—combined efforts after the institute’s board meeting in February 2009. Haywood had teamed up with Beach, a physician and associate professor at the School of Medicine who holds a joint appointment at the Bloomberg School, to develop videos featuring SCD patients explaining their struggles to get proper care. At the meeting, they learned that Rushton and Geller, a professor of medicine at the School of Medicine with a joint appointment at the Bloomberg School, were developing a curriculum to train clinicians in providing palliative care to children with life-threatening neuromuscular diseases, including Duchenne MD. “We had this aha experience and realized we could combine forces,” Haywood remembers. Joyce Hesselberth

Alumni

Teaming Up

Alumni Offer Sick Children Hope for a Good Day

ids with sickle cell disease (SCD) grow up facing a future of potential organ damage, vision problems, infections, and stroke. But perhaps the most agonizing part of living with the disease is dealing with the “crises”—unpredictable attacks of intense pain that take over little bodies, often sending them to a hospital for narcotics to curb the pain. But getting treatment can be tough. “When I go to the ER, I often see a doctor not willing to give me the amount of medicine that will help me get out of pain,” says Jasmine Llewellyn, a 24-year-old SCD patient who was diagnosed at 9 months. “And to deal with the stress of that on top of the pain just makes it worse.” “There is a big disconnect between what providers believe and what patients actually experience,” adds Carlton Haywood Jr., SPH ’09 (PhD), an assistant professor in the School of Medicine who himself lives with

56 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

They spent the first year of the grant developing a series of nine videos on different aspects of palliative care, including transitioning from child to adult care and gaining the trust of patients. They plan to use the curricula they develop with the videos for training programs now undergoing testing at nine U.S. hospitals. In addition to alleviating discomfort, the researchers hope their training will lead to patients and their parents being more involved in making decisions about their care. Geller cites a surgery that boys with Duchenne MD get around age 14. The surgery fuses the spine so that they can sit up straight and breathe, but they also lose their ability to bend forward, and the surgery can cause chronic pain. “Clinicians tend to emphasize the benefits of the surgery, but what we hear from families is that they really had no idea there would be such a loss of function,” says Geller. “They don’t allow families to think about what kind of life they want to live for however many years the patient has left.” The videos also attend to the emotional well-being of the patient. “One of our videos focuses on hope,” says Geller. “When hope for a cure is the only form of hope, it can be devastating for families because every year they hear about some discovery that is 25 years off, or that fails, and it becomes a roller-coaster ride. One contribution of palliative care is other things to hope for, to hope for a good day or to have meaning in life. That’s a major goal for our project.” —Kristi Birch, A&S ’06 (MA)

Brian Linden, SAIS Nanj ’88 (Cert)

Settled in Happy Town

rian Linden lives in a small Chinese village called Xizhou, on the old trading route to Tibet. Fluent in Mandarin, he knows the local horse-cart drivers and basket weavers, and can recall the most arcane minutiae of the area’s history and architecture. He’s fascinated by the people here, and the villagers are in turn enchanted that this 6-foot-plus guy from Chicago has so fully embraced their lifestyle and language. “Every time I speak [Mandarin],” Linden says, “they’re blown away.” He and his wife, Jeanee, a Chinese-American from San Francisco, have spent the past several years creating the Linden Centre, a retreat for visitors seeking China at its most authentic—along with some of the comforts they might find in an American boutique hotel. They wrestled with red tape, charmed Chinese officials in the country’s southwestern Yunnan Province, and “risked their life savings,” Linden says, to acquire an architecturally significant stone complex and painstakingly transform it into something beyond a hotel. Linden coins it “a non-urban-based intellectual retreat.” Since the fall of 2008, they’ve welcomed mostly Western guests for weeklong cultural immersions that don’t look much like ordinary tourism. “Everyone becomes

part of the community,” according to Linden. He took a recent group to meet the village elder; on another day they observed a ceremony honoring the dead, and briefly paid their respects to the family in mourning. And back at the center? Espresso and wireless service. It has recently been selected for a 2010 Global Vision Award by Travel + Leisure magazine. Yet, Linden admits, he “knew nothing about China” until his early 20s. After studying political science at Northeastern Illinois University, he graduated at 21 with an itch to travel. Somewhat on a whim, he signed on to study in Beijing, arriving that summer via the TransSiberian Express. He says, “I remember coming in on the train over Mongolia and really seriously [feeling] probably more at home than anyplace I had been outside of the States.” After more schooling in the United States, in 1987 Linden entered Johns Hopkins’ fledgling program in Nanjing, where he and the other Americans were each paired with Chinese roommates studying Western culture. It was a revolutionary idea in repressive 1980s China, where Linden was detained (quite politely, he insists) 13 times for traveling in areas off-limits to foreigners. But he loved it all. The program, he says, “made me realize that China was going to be my life.” The Lindens, who have two sons, Bryce, 11, and Shayne, 14, have kept an American foothold for the past 15 years with the Linden Gallery of Asian Art in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin. As the Linden Centre grows busier, Jeanee has been dividing her time between Wisconsin and China in order to maintain the gallery. But Linden’s focus is firmly in Xizhou (“Happy Town” in Chinese), where he has a platform to share his favorite subject with the uninitiated. Every day he jogs through the rice fields, he says, and thinks, “What a joy in life to think that you can continue to do what you have a passion for. This is my dream.” —Christina Ianzito

Brian Linden embraces the traditions of villagers in the Yunnan Province of China. Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 57

News & Notes

from our graduates and friends

that, they insist, are as good as the $20 stuff but, like their haircuts, are priced a bit lower. Portman, who grew up in Laredo, Texas, always had a creative streak—it’s just taken him a few decades to find the best way to express it. He thought of attending art school, he says, and then the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars “kindled my love of writing, of creating worlds.” After graduation, he spent the next several years in various jobs, including four years working at a Dallas ad agency, writing screenplays on the side. Then it was on to Los Angeles, where at one point he took a job at a public relations firm and met his wife, Erin, and later wrote speeches for the president of Disneyland. By 2005, Portman had grown tired of long L.A.–style commutes and corporate writing jobs, and the couple, who now have two young sons, headed to the way-more-mellow Austin. Once the business was born and beginning to boom, Portman says he relished being “my own boss and my own editor” while working on what he calls “a big art project.” With Birds, he adds, he’s finally found a satisfying creative outlet: “You can see it, touch it, hear it—it’s 3D. Life is good.” —CI Erin Williamson

Alumni

Michael Portman is the creative force behind four rock ’n’ roll barbershops in Austin, Texas.

Michael D. Portman, A&S ’96

Cut, Rattle, and Roll

ichael Portman arrived in Austin from Los Angeles a few years ago, in desperate need of a haircut. He asked his longtime buddy Jayson Rapaport where to find a good hair salon, casually mentioning how much he liked the ones he’d known in L.A. —unisex places that were stylishly low-key, friendly, and unfrilly, with good music and reasonable prices. None like that here, Rapaport said, not even close. Just the usual old-school barbershops, boring chain haircutteries, and fussy salons. Rapaport, then the owner of two Quiznos sandwich shops and looking for a new venture, half-joked that they might have hit upon a business idea. Portman—seeking a new creative project himself— took the comment seriously: Maybe they could offer the city that touts its weirdness an alternative that would be “cool without pretension.” And, even better, maybe they could make a little money and have a lot of fun doing it. In 2006, with the help of a small-business loan, Portman and Rapaport opened the first Birds Barbershop on Austin’s South Lamar Boulevard. (There are now four.) Rapaport is the financial guy, and Portman’s imagination is behind its retro look, which became a template for the subsequent Birds: vintage rock ’n’ roll decor, lots of black and chrome, Technicolor art, 1980s-era video games, and an eclectic music mix—bossa nova, country, hip-hop— he compiles himself. Prices are mid-range, there are no appointments, and each client—about 70 percent are men—is offered a free beer upon arrival. The pair has just created a line of unisex hair products called “Verb” 58 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

Ruth Barnard, Nurs ’58 (Dipl)

Training Nurses Where They’re Needed

hen nursing professor Ruth Barnard retired in 2000 after teaching for 25 years at the University of Michigan, she planned to spend a lot of time watering and weeding the colorful Knockout roses in her delightful front-yard garden. But then she got a phone call from the pastor at her local church. After pointing out that poverty-stricken Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, was in dire need of trained nurses, the pastor asked Barnard if she wanted to volunteer for a vitally important public health project. Would she be willing to travel to Haiti in order to help launch a desperately needed school of nursing? “Creating a school of nursing is a very complicated business—especially when you’re doing it in a foreign country—and I soon became totally consumed by it,” says Barnard, while describing the 11 trips she’s taken to the Maryland-sized Caribbean country since agreeing to the pastor’s surprising proposal 10 years ago. “When

Courtesy of Haiti Nursing Foundation

I first started working on the project, I knew almost nothing about Haiti. But that changed in a hurry, and I began helping to plan and organize the school from the ground up.” Barnard and several other Michigan volunteers went through “a long, hard struggle” to raise funds from her local church and other resources, and to help organize the Haitian administrative entity that would manage the new facility. The effort paid off in 2005, when the new school opened its doors with 36 Haitian nursing students in the economically stressed city of Léogâne, located about 20 miles west of Port-au-Prince. Then, last January, when the massive earthquake devastated the area and took the lives of an estimated 150,000 people, the fledgling nursing academy suffered its own losses. Three of its students, who were living in private residences, were killed in the quake. “It was a terrible tragedy,” says Barnard, who was not in Haiti during the earthquake. The school suffered damage to its compound wall and water towers, but the buildings at least were spared. (The campus is now home to nearly 1,000 townspeople who live in tents with nowhere to go.) Classes resumed in May 2010, and the school is once again producing trained graduates who can now help in the recovery effort. “So far, the school has graduated more than four dozen nurses, and the enrollment is about 100,” Barnard says. Known as FSIL, or the Faculté des Sciences Infirmières de l’Université Episcopale d’Haiti, the school is attached to the Episcopal University of Haiti and offers a four-year curriculum of nursing studies modeled on leading baccalaureate nursing programs in the United States. To help raise funds and assist in the operation of the school, Barnard and several other FSIL volunteers established the nonprofit Haiti Nursing Foundation, which has provided startup money and continues

Shelf Life The Power of the Sea: Tsunamis, Storm Surges, Rogue Waves, and Our Quest to Predict Disasters, by Bruce Parker, A&S ’80 (MA), ’85 (PhD) (Palgrave Macmillan). As late as 2004, much of the world was ignorant of tsunamis, in any language. But when nearly 3 million died in an Indian Ocean tsunami that year, a tidal wave of world attention gave the Japanese term traction. The oceanographer author starts with a seaside concept we ought to have mastered— tides—recounting the triumphs of military leaders who divined the attractive powers of the crescent moon to swamp their less seaworthy opponents at flood tide.Then on to wave motion and its abhorrent killer rogue, currents, and the aberrant El Niño. But it is the tsunami and its seismic aspect, the clash of tectonic plates in the ’04 disaster, that dominates the book’s conclusion on what has been done, and must be, to warn of future devastations. Paradise Under Glass: An Amateur Creates a Conservatory Garden, by Ruth Kassinger, SAIS ’82 (William Morrow) The author offers all that is needed to practice inhouse gardening, fueled for the most part by a sun aligned above the roofing glass. In her enthusiasm, she also implants more mildly relevant history than one might expect—of making wrought and then cast iron as well as the plate glass, for instance, to explain the blossoming 200 years ago of crystal palaces for tropical flora demanded by wealthy Europeans. After explaining the economics of plant marketing, she closes strong with how to put a living wall in the conservatory. Having disclosed familial and medical issues along the way, her writing flowers into more a memoir than a how-to. —Lew Diuguid, SAIS ’63

to help meet daily expenses, with additional help from other funding sources. Describing the urgent need for nursing education in Haiti, Barnard, who holds a nursing PhD from New York University, notes that there are currently 10.7 nurses per 100,000 people in Haiti, compared to 940 in the United States. “Even before the tragic earthquake, Haiti faced enormous public health challenges, and the lack of trained nurses was certainly one of them,” she says. “The battle to help rebuild Haiti after the earthquake has only begun, but we’re hoping that we’ve made a very real start by helping to train nurses.” —Tom Nugent, A&S ’80 (MLA) FSIL students raise the Haitian flag on the school’s campus. Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 59

Alumni

News & Notes

from our graduates and friends

Just 19 years old, Hackerman was inexperienced yet hungry to learn, and Whiting was a willing teacher and mentor. The two worked closely together for nearly two decades before Whiting selected his protégé to succeed him as president in 1955. “Mr. Whithortly after he graduated from Johns Hoping instilled in me the conviction that hard work and kins University, Willard Hackerman, Engr ’38, honest dealing would result in what we value most: took a phone call from a school administhe trust, loyalty, and respect of our clients,” Hackertrator asking if he’d like to interview for a man says. job with a construction engineering firm. Today Hackerman is still at the helm of the WhitHackerman, who had gone straight from school to an ing-Turner Contracting Company, one of the nation’s uninspiring job as a surveyor, eagerly said yes. largest construction management and general conG. W. C. Whiting was co-founder of the Whitingtracting companies, known for building mid-Atlantic Turner Contracting Company, a builder of bridges and landmarks such as Baltimore’s National Aquarium, Hartunnels, and already a fan of Johns Hopkins engineers. borplace, the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, M&T Bank (His right-hand man, Lester Phillipy, had graduated in Stadium, the second Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and 1920.) After the interview, he hired Hackerman as a several projects on the campuses of Johns Hopkins field engineer for $35 a week. University and the University of Maryland. The earnest and inexperienced have relied on trusted counselors for perhaps thousands of years. (In Greek mythology, before leaving for the Trojan War, Odysseus charged an old man named Mentor to guide his son and guard his palace in his absence.) And while storied, lifelong relationships that result in the inheriting of a company might be rare, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Johns Hopkins University student, graduate, or faculty member who couldn’t name at least a couple of mentors who have helped them make their way through rigorous academic and professional environments. Often, those relationships happen by chance. But more and more, Johns Hopkins University is finding ways to nurture those kinds of relationships. Across Johns Hopkins campuses, initiatives such as Willard Hackerman, shown in 1998 standing before a portrait of his mentor that the Carey Business School Alumni hangs behind his office desk, has been a trusted adviser to deans and presidents and Mentor Program pair alumni with a volunteer leader at Johns Hopkins University for more than 70 years. Along with students based on industry career his wife, Lillian, he has provided philanthropic support on the Homewood campus interests, then ask them to meet and at the School of Medicine, notably making the visionary gift that established the on their own schedules for coachHackerman Scholars, a program providing tuition support for students from Baltiing and casual conversations. The more Polytechnic Institute to attend the Whiting School. He was honored this fall Johns Hopkins Nurses’ Alumni for his unwavering support to the university by the naming of Hackerman Hall on Association launched such a prothe Homewood campus. gram this fall, with more than 40 alumni volunteering in the program’s first weeks, and the Career Center administers a similar program that serves alumni and students in the Whiting School of Engineering and the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

A Gift of Opportunity

The Mentors Among Us

Michael Melford

60 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

Mike Ciesielski

Students are also encouraged to mentor through programs like the Johns Hopkins Tutorial Project, an after-school tutori n g p r o g r a m that serves about 100 elementary school students who come to the Homewood campus twice a week for one-on-one help with reading and math from Johns Hopkins undergraduate volunteers. In East Baltimore, a new federally funded, nationwide initiative to increase diversity in the nursing workforce has put a team of nursing students and practicing nurses in Baltimore city schools to mentor disadvantaged youth and provide health education. In return, the Johns Hopkins students, who also come from disadvantaged backgrounds, receive scholarships. “Traditionally, a mentor’s goal was to take all of the knowledge they had and make sure the student teacher had all of that information,” says Lenore J. Cohen, a faculty member at the School of Education who, in 1994, established a teacher preparation program called the School Immersion Master of Arts in Teaching. In a larger effort to redesign teacher education, the program created structured mentoring relationships between classroom teachers and the graduate students who would spend one year interning with them. One of the first steps was to teach classroom teachers how to be mentors, rather than assume that a respected teacher would naturally make an effective mentor. The program offered instruction in theory and a “common language” created to help teachers articulate their practices, and it reinforced those skills through regular group meetings. “What we wanted were reflective practitioners who could think about their teaching and decide what makes sense for children and pass it on by explaining why it works,” Cohen says. “That doesn’t come just from putting in your years in the classroom, but from thinking hard.” As the program has grown, from 19 interns in two

Through programs such as the Johns Hopkins Tutorial Project, the university is invested in creating and supporting a variety of opportunities for students to learn the benefits of mentorship. schools in 1994 to 48 in nine schools across central Maryland in 2010, Cohen says it has been deemed a success. The benefit for students is tangible, but what’s often surprising is how deeply the mentors are affected. “It’s one thing to teach in a classroom, and quite another to give back to the profession you love,” she says. “When you share your expertise effectively, your influence can be exponential.” Willard Hackerman would agree. In 1980, Hackerman, who had led the charge to re-establish the Johns Hopkins Engineering School, which had been merged with the School of Arts and Sciences after World War II, directed part of Whiting’s estate to fund the effort. The school, the G.W.C. Whiting School of Engineering, now bears his mentor’s name. What’s more, at Whiting-Turner, Hackerman created a formal program in which every newly hired engineer is assigned a mentor from among the company’s experienced ranks. In their first days on the job, every new engineer meets Hackerman. —Nora Koch Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 61

A Day in the Life of Ray Snow, A&S ’70 In October, Raymond W. Snow ascended the ranks to become the 55th president of the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association. We sat down with Ray to uncover a little more about our new man at the top.

A perfect day: Begins with a sunrise walk along the Atlantic, then continues with a busy day at work with positive financial markets and great clients (with some JHU Alumni Association “biz” mixed in), Florida mahimahi dinner with French rosé, sunset walk on the Lake Worth Lagoon. On my iPod now: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

I usually wake up: At 6:30 a.m.—no alarm clock needed—in Palm Beach, Florida, where I am lucky enough to both live and work.

Will Kirk / homewoodphoto.jhu.edu

My caling: Helping others, whether in my work offering financial advice, volunteering, or just pitching in when help is needed. I’m most proud of: My family. I have been married to Christine for 40 years, have two great and successful children, and three terrific grandchildren.

Hobbies: Sailing, ocean fishing, travel, following the Blue Jays athletics and the Orioles. You’ll always find these three “must-haves” in my pantry/fridge: Tabasco sauce, Obrycki’s crab spice, and white vinegar for steaming crabs. Favorite Johns Hopkins moments: Meeting Johns Hopkins University President Milton S. Eisenhower during my freshman year, 1966, and donning full academic regalia as a university trustee at President Daniels’ installation in 2009. Most audacious campus prank: “Borrowing” another fraternity’s red front door as a pledge. We were stopped by a beat policeman and urged to return the door, which we did (and still got into the fraternity). Best summer job while at Hopkins: Being a Good Humor man the summer after my sophomore year. I met my wife when I sold a toasted almond bar to her then 4-year-old sister. Cherished Johns Hopkins tradition: Lacrosse, preferably in the middle of throngs of alumni at Homecoming, or at the NCAA Championships, or with local Florida alumni watching televised games. Visits to Johns Hopkins campuses in 2009: 15. Expected number of visits in 2010: At least the same. Favorite Alumni Association benefit: Getting 10 percent off at the Barnes & Noble bookstore when loading up on JHU ties and garb for everyone in the family. Biggest challenge facing the Alumni Association: Addressing the needs of a 20-something recent graduate from Homewood while still staying relevant to our graduate schools’ alumni populations. Why I am thrilled to be president of the Alumni Association: In the Mason Hall Alumni Board Room, I look up at the wall listing the names of the fabulous alumni who have held this position before me. These are people that I know have made a difference for our alumni and the university. Joining that group is one of those “pinch myself” moments in life.

Alumni

News & Notes

1946

Laura Brautigam June, Nurs ’46, writes that “she has been working on behalf of the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps members to try to get an honorable discharge from Congress.” Several bills have been introduced to this effect, but all have died in committee.

1947

Bettie Jean Knight-Howard, Nurs ’47 (Cert), retired in August 2007 from the University of Maryland Medical Center, after 41 years of service. She is also past president of the Society of Gastrointestinal Nurses and Associates.

1948

Eugene Blank, A&S ’48, Med ’54, had a new version of his book, USMC 457703: World War II, A History, A Memory, published in April 2010.

from our graduates and friends

1969

Betty Bonas, Nurs ’69, writes that she is “enjoying life as a grandmother—just blessed with my first granddaughter, have two grandsons, and another granddaughter due in October.”

1970

Thomas J. Kuna (Kuna-Jacob), SAIS Bol ’70 (Dipl), SAIS ’71, writes that his new book, Peace Process in the Holy Land, World Peace and Justice, and the Future Architecture of the Universe, was published in October by Peace Works Press under the pen name James Jacob.

1972

Norman Subotnik, A&S ’49, writes of himself and his two brothers: “Myron Subotnik, A&S ’49,’79 (MLA), a World War II veteran and president of his own advertising agency, died in October 2001. Leo Subotnik, A&S ’47, who was also a WWII veteran, worked for the Veterans Administration and is now retired in Nevada City, California. [I am] a veteran of the Korean War, worked for the Department of Health and Human Services, and am now retired in Palm Desert, California.”

Sandford Gross, A&S ’72, who was one of the founders of Polk Audio in 1972, has launched his third loudspeaker company, GoldenEar Technology. Grace Campbell Jubb-Bichy, Nurs ’72, is working at HealthNewsmakers ways Disease Management Program in Columbia, Maryland. Her husband died David Starobin, Peab ’73, in March 2009. Barry Verkauf, HS ’72, was along with Jason Vieaux, was named professor of obstetrics and gyneselected to lead the new cology at the University of South Florida classical guitar department College of Medicine.

1952

1973

1949

Esther Kristman Falk, Ed ’52, ’60 (MEd), writes that she “was recognized as one of the members of the newly established Women’s Pioneers Society.”

1953

T. Scott McCay, Med ’53, is retired and enjoying life along with 12 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren. Georgia Topal Tangires, Peab ’53, retired as choir director of Baltimore’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation in October. Tangires will be replaced by a fellow Peabody graduate, Fotini Filis Arnas-Nichols, Peab ’66.

1959

William E. Berndt, A&S ’59, who played football, basketball, and baseball, and was president of the Boys’ Latin 1954 Senior Class, will be inducted into the Boys’ Latin Hall of Fame on November 4.

1962

Douglas H. Hurlburt, A&S ’62, has retired from his position as chief scientist for the Technology Management Division of Schafer Corporation. Hurlburt continues to manage his defense-related consulting business, Beacon Place Associates, LLC, as well as Dynamic Sounds Associates, LLC, his “hobby business” developing high-end audio electronic equipment. Robert G. Keane Jr., Engr ’62, a leading expert on the design of naval ships, received the 2009 Harold E. Saunders Award from the American Society of Naval Engineers for his lifetime of service and contributions.

1963

August V. B. Millard Jr., A&S ’63, is retired and doing volunteer work with children in Casablanca.

1965

Herbert Better, A&S ’65, a partner with the Baltimore office of Zuckerman Spaeder, was selected by his peers to be included in the 2011 edition of The Best Lawyers in America.

1967

Joseph L. DeVitis, A&S ’67, Ed ’69 (MEd), is now a visiting professor of education at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Stephen Kramer, A&S ’67, announces the publication of his new book, Encountering Israel—Geography, History, Culture (Comteq Publishing). David J. Thompson, A&S ’67, is a deputy project scientist for NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which passed its second successful year in space in June.

1968

Iain S. Baird, A&S ’68, SAIS ’72, has published TWO STORMS: Prostate Cancer and Katrina in New Orleans (CyPress Publications, June 2010). The book documents his diagnosis, treatment, and recovery from prostate cancer in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Robert M. Campbell Jr., A&S ’73, orthopedic surgeon at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, was honored in July with a Congressional Resolution for his work on the VEPTR and his expertise in thoracic insufficiency syndrome. The VEPTR is an expandable pediatric chest device, which enables reconstructive surgery for children with severe spinal defects. Thomas Totten, A&S ’73, an attorney with Duane Morris, LLP in Baltimore, was recognized as an outstanding real estate lawyer by the Chambers USA survey of the American legal profession.

1974

at the Curtis Institute of Music, one of the world’s leading conservatories, for the 2011–2012 school year. Starobin is an internationally renowned solo guitarist and a Grammy award–winning record producer. Brian Udoff, A&S ’03, received the 2010 Emerging Cinematographers Award given by the International Cinematographers Guild on September 26. Udoff was recognized for his short film Les Mouches.

Thomas Harbin Jr., HS ’74, has published Waking Up Blind: Lawsuits over Eye Surgery (Langdon Street Press, 2009). Timothy C. Hengst, Med ’74 (MA), advanced to the rank of full professor at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California, in April.

1976

Carlos Mock, A&S ’76, an author, speaker, and activist, has published several books, including Mosaic Virus (Floricanto Press, 2007) and Borrowing Time: A Latino Sexual Odyssey (Floricanto Press, 2003).

1977

Jack Fruchtman, A&S ’77 (PhD), a professor of political science at Towson University, received a University System of Maryland (USM) 2010 Regents’ Faculty Award for research in April.

1978

Richard Colgan, SPH ’78, a family medicine specialist at the University of Maryland Medical Center, has recently published his new book, Advice to the Young Physician on the Art of Medicine (Springer, 2010). Steven Eastaugh, SPH ’78 (ScD), a professor at George Washington University, published “Obamacare 2.0: The Need for a Second Healthcare Reformation” in the fall issue of Harvard Health Policy Review. Leonard Weather Jr., HS ’78, became the 111th president of the National Medical Association in August.

1979

John P. Caradonna, A&S ’79, ’80 (MA), a chemistry professor at Boston University received the Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching at BU’s Commencement on May 16. Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 63

Alumni

News & Notes

from our graduates and friends

1980

Howard Fox, A&S ’80, ’80 (MA), was named senior associate dean for research and development in the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Medicine, effective July 1.

1981

Michael Seth Abrams, Engr ’81 (MSE), who lives in Brazil, teaches mathematics online for Empire State College and is a research associate for Empowerment Works!—a sustainability think tank. Paula Boggs, A&S ’81, an emerging singer-songwriter and executive vice president with Starbucks Coffee, released her 12-track debut CD, A Buddha State of Mind, in June. Elisabeth Millard, SAIS ’81, is U.S. consul general, Casablanca.

1982

Richard H. Bodek, A&S ’82, chair of the History Department at the College of Charleston, has co-edited The Fruits of Exile, Central European Newsmaker Intellectual Immigration to America in the Age of Fascism (University of South Lynn Goldman, SPH ’81, a Carolina Press, 2010). Carl Colton, A&S ’82, is a pediatrician and epidemiologist, gastroenterologist, living in Lancaster, received the 2010 Heinz Award Pennsylvania, with his wife and three in September for her work in children. His daughter is currently a sophomore at Johns Hopkins. reducing children’s exposure to

pesticides and toxic chemicals. The Heinz Awards annually honor the late U.S. Senator John Heinz for his long-standing commitment to the environment.

1983

Carey Bligard, Med ’83, a physician and author, has published her debut novel, Mr. Darcy’s Little Sister (Sourcebooks, 2010), written under her pen name, C. Allyn Pierson.

1984

Michael V. Gilliland, A&S ’84 (MA), Engr ’85 (MSE), is marketing manager at SAS Institute and author of a new book, The Business Forecasting Deal (Wiley, 2010). Debora Kuchka-Craig, SPH ’84, is serving as the voluntary chair of the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) Board of Directors for 2010–2011. HFMA is the nation’s leading membership organization of healthcare finance executives and leaders.

1986

Daniel Pallace, Engr ’86, director of construction services for Merritt Properties, was named chair of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Baltimore in July. The ULI seeks to provide leadership in the responsible use of land and in creating and sustaining thriving communities worldwide.

1988

Gregory Fortsch, A&S ’91, is a senior attorney in the Division of Advertising Practices at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington. Heather Spooner Garrant, Nurs ’91, is starting a new position as post-anesthesia nurse at Carlisle Regional Medical Center in Pennsylvania. Philip A. Garrant, Engr ’91, writes that he has completed his command at Elgin Air Force Base in Florida and was recently selected for early promotion to colonel. He is now attending Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. J. Eric Hastings, Engr ’91, ’97 (MS), recently joined Millennial Media, one of the world’s biggest mobile advertising networks, which is based in Baltimore. Shamina J. Henkel, A&S ’91, is working at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta as consultation liaison psychiatrist. Elin Hilderbrand, A&S ’91, a well-known fiction author, has published her ninth novel, The Island (Reagan Arthur Books, 2010). A previous novel, The Castaways (Little Brown & Company, 2009), hit The New York Times best-seller list in June. Everett Hsu, A&S ’91, has been a senior physician in internal medicine at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California, for the past 11 years. He also is a worship leader at Trinity Christian Fellowship. Andrea Marsh Kowalski, A&S ’91, lives near the beach in St. Petersburg, Florida. Her son is in kindergarten, and her daughter is in third grade. Sandra “Sandi” Macan, A&S ’91, is a recruiter for QUAD656, specializing in placement for accounting/finance positions in the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware area. Kristen K. Murphy, A&S ’91, who got married in 2008, finished her ED and had a baby in 2009. She is currently a principal in a large urban middle school in Los Angeles. Eric Ruck, A&S ’91, writes, “I’ve been involved with increasingly high profile mobile phone applications, which has been both fun and rewarding.” Jennifer Sharp, Engr ’91, is living in the Philadelphia area and plans to complete her master’s degree and get back to singing and teaching voice in the next year.

1992

Mehmet Ferden Carikci, SAIS Bol ’92 (Dipl), SAIS ’93, was appointed chief foreign policy adviser to Turkish President Abdullah Gul in July. Caren Levine, Peab ’92, a classical pianist and vocal coach, was named studio manager and principal coach for the Florida Grand Opera Young Artist Program. Deirdre R. Wheatley-Liss, A&S ’92, an elder law attorney with Fein, Such, Kahn & Shepard, P.C., was appointed to Montclair State University’s Planned Giving Advisory Council in June.

1993

Timothy S. Gilbert, A&S ’93 (MA), senior vice president of Campus Management Corporation, headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, was named 2010 Chief Marketing Officer of the Year by the CMO Institute in May 2010.

Wendy DuBoe, SAIS Bol ’88 (Dipl), SAIS ’89, was promoted to chief operating officer at the United Way of Metropolitan Chicago in July. J. Kent Lydecker, A&S ’88 (PhD), formerly of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was named director of the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, effective October 12. Debbi Miller, Nurs ’88, is a revenue integrity manager for LifePoint Hospitals’ corporate office. Miller recently moved back to West Virginia, where she works remotely from her home. Alexandra Marmion Roosa, A&S ’88, was appointed director, Research and Sponsored Programs, for Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, effective July 1.

Jessie Chou, Engr ’94, and her husband, Peter, are enjoying time with their son, Dylan, who was born on July 21. Chris Daly, SPH ’94, is president of the board of directors of Tennessee’s first environmental charter high school, Ivy Academy. Daly announced in August that the 2009–2010 ninth-grade test scores show that the Ivy Academy’s model is working. Patricia Lakatta, Bus ’94 (MS), director of AbrakadoodleBaltimore, an art-education company, received an achievement award for her program and a top producers award for her strong business performance.

1989

1995

Mia Birk, SAIS Bol ’89 (Dipl), SAIS ’90, announces her new book, Joyride: Pedaling Toward a Healthier Planet (Cadence Press, September), which follows Birk’s 20-year crusade to integrate bicycling into daily life. Michelle L. Dobrawsky, A&S ’89, is an intellectual property and general litigation attorney, who also performs and produces comedy with SuperEgo Comedy in New York. Eric G. Orlinsky, A&S ’89, a partner and chair of the Corporate Group in the Baltimore Office of Saul Ewing LLP, was appointed a fellow of the American Bar Foundation in June.

1991

Robin Blasberg, Engr ’91, who lives in Ellicott City, Maryland, with her husband and two children, works at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. 64 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

1994

Patrick Brans, Engr ’95 (MS), has written Master the Moment: Fifty CEOs Teach You the Secrets of Time Management, which is scheduled to be published in January 2011. Margaret Villers, A&S ’95, is an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Medical University of South Carolina. Villers was lead author of a recent study researching the correlation between obesity in teenage girls and the likelihood of their being sexually active.

1996

Mohamad Allaf, Engr ’96, Med ’00, HS ’03, had a big surprise at his recent wedding—his fiancée commissioned Duff Goldman of “Ace of Cakes” to make a grooms cake shaped like the da Vinci surgical system robot, with which Allaf works regularly.

Jeanette Krolikowski, A&S ’96, married her husband, Rob, on May 22 in San Anselmo, California. Several Hopkins classmates attended the wedding. Samantha Marks, A&S ’96, who is a new mom to a baby girl, is working as a behavioral therapist and special education coordinator.

1999

Isaac Cates, A&S ’99 (MA), is co-editor of Daniel Clowes: Conversations (University Press of Mississippi), which features interviews with Daniel Clowes, a graphic novel innovator.

2000

Jen Arnold, Med ’00, a neonatologist at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, and her husband, Bill Klein, are the stars of a TLC series, The Little Couple. Sebastiao Edgar Borges, A&S ’00 (MA), writes that he received the medal of the Order of Military Merit, the highest award given by the Brazilian Army in a time of peace, in April.

2001

Jennifer Coughlin, A&S ’01, HS ’07, is working as a Johns Hopkins research fellow this year in collaboration with the Department of Neuroradiology with an aim to obtain training in use of PET technology to study psychiatric illness. Natalie Derzko, A&S ’01 (MS), has been promoted to of counsel within the Washington office of Covington & Burling LLP. Derzko practices in the areas of intellectual property and patent law. Anne Jefferson, A&S ’01, writes, “I am proud to say that I earned my PhD from Gordon Grant, who earned his PhD at JHU under ‘Reds’ Wolman, himself a JHU graduate.” Nakul Kapoor, Engr ’01, who recently got married, went back to school in 2009 and plans to complete his MBA in 2011. Isabella O. Maldonado, A&S ’01, recently traveled to Cuba on a trip led by Eduardo Gonzalez, professor of Latin American cinema and literature at Johns Hopkins. Nettie Owens, Engr ’01, founded an organizing company, Sappari Solutions LLC in 2004. Her business, which is based in Havre de Grace, Maryland, has recently expanded to include on-site organizing, remote organizing services, and cleaning services. Bonnie Schwartz, A&S ’01, a former member of the Johns Hopkins swim team, became the 756th person since 1875 to swim across the English Channel on July 12, 2005. It took 13 hours, 28 minutes to swim from England to France. Vanni Vanin, A&S ’01, writes, “I worked in Ticket Operations at the last two Olympic games in Beijing and Vancouver.”

2002

Shermian Daniel, A&S ’02, a resident physician in anesthesiology at the Mayo Clinic, has partnered with Richard Daniel to publish So You Wanna Be A Doctor?? The Untold Stories of Medical, Dental, and Veterinary Residents (WagnerWolf, 2009), a how-to navigation guide through the health professions.

2003

Courtney Block, Bus ’03 (MS), has recently entered the field of business coaching and looks forward to celebrating 20 years in business.

2004

Catherine A. Miller, Nurs ’04 (Cert), ’08 (MN), received a Nursing Spectrum 2010 Teaching Award in recognition of her work writing and implementing a training program for Howard County General Hospital. Melvin “Wayne” Porter, Bus ’04 (MS), joined Fast-teks Inc., an on-site computer service company, as area-director of Laurel, Maryland, and the surrounding area in July.

2005

Kathleen Gross, Nurs ’05, was a guest editor of Perioperative Nursing Clinics (W.B. Sanders Co, June 2010) and wrote a chapter in Alexander’s Care of the Patient in Surgery 14th ed. (Mosby, 2010). Russell Nadel, Peab ’05, ’06 (BM/MM), finished his composition for orchestra, The Road to Independence. Nadel and fourth-graders worked on the piece together, as a part of the Storyboard Project with the ARTSEDGE educational arm of the Kennedy Center in Washington. Ron Pivarnik, Engr ’05, spent a week in July working with ABC’s

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition in Baltimore. The episode aired on September 26, 2010.

2006

Andrew Bail, A&S ’06, married his college girlfriend, Carol Slaughter, on July 25, 2009. They live in Boston and have a puppy. Samantha Davis, A&S ’06, is attending the University of Michigan Medical School. Thomas P. McBride, A&S ’06, is a medical student at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Samiksha Nair, A&S ’06, writes that she “has been working in West Palm Beach, Florida, on a DOE consulting contract for efficient energy implementation.” Newsmaker Meighan Roose, A&S ’06, is living in Portland, Oregon, working for Nike. Roose is also working on her Harley Feldbaum, SPH ’00, MBA at Stanford University. director of the Global Health Michael Scheib, Engr ’06, is a and Foreign Policy Initiative life adviser who specializes in financial planning, retirement planning, and and a professorial lecturer higher education funding. at the Johns Hopkins Nitze Cory Snyder, A&S ’06, is currently working on a project for the Port AuthorSchool of Advanced Internaity of New York and New Jersey. tional Studies, and Rachel Thornton, Med Noah Stanzione, A&S ’06, has published several articles and began teaching ’04, SPH ’04 (PhD), HS ’07, a pediatrihigh school Latin in September. cian and public health researcher who was an Daniel Szelingowski, A&S ’06, is assistant professor at Johns Hopkins School working on his master’s degree at Seton Hall University. of Medicine, were selected to serve as 2010–

2008

2011 White House Fellows in June.

Carrie W. Bullock, SPH ’08, is acting deputy director, Division of Outpatient Care at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Baltimore.

2009

Diana Raschke, Ed ’09 (MS), has co-authored The ETIM: China’s Islamic Militants and the Global Terrorist Threat (Prager, 2010).

2010

Kelly Cantley, Bus ’10 (MBA), director of business development for Turner Construction, was appointed treasurer of Urban Land Institute (ULI) Baltimore in July. ULI seeks to provide leadership in the responsible use of land and in creating and sustaining thriving communities worldwide. Miljana Vujosevic, SAIS ’10, wrote that she was working with the USA Pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai. Vujosevic will be working in operations on the ground in the Pavilion and also in the Protocol Department arranging high-level visits from diplomats all over the world. Alexandra Zenoff, A&S ’10, is part of the largest group of American Peace Corps volunteers to serve in Cambodia, and includes the first-ever group of community health educators.

In memoriam Katherine Sharp, Nurs ’35, a psychiatric nurse, died June 20 in Baltimore. Elisabeth Mast Buck, A&S ’37 (MA), a nursery school teacher, died on June 6 in Westminster, Maryland. Frank Muller, Engr ’39, an engineer, died May 28 in Fort Collins, Colorado. Lalla Iverson, A&S ’40, Med ’43, a geo-pathologist and medical missionary, died June 13 in Derwood, Maryland. William L. MacVane Jr., Med ’41, a thoracic surgeon, died August 1 in Portland, Maine. Irvin C. Tillman Sr., Engr ’41, a thoroughbred horse breeder, died August 1 in Wellington, Florida. Joseph M. Lee, Med ’42, who practiced medicine for over 50 years, died August 5 in Birmingham, Alabama. Charles Hanzlik Jr., A&S ’43, a systems analyst at the Pentagon, died July 14 in Alexandria, Virginia. Marlin U. Zimmerman Jr., Engr ’44, a chemical engineer, died May 23 in Easton, Maryland.

Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 65

Alumni

News & Notes

from our graduates and friends

Marguerite W. Hawkins, Nurs ’47, a registered nurse for over 40 years, died July 31 in Portsmouth, Virginia.

Calvin Horace Curry Jr., Med ’60, an OB/GYN for 45 years, died July 30 in Miramar Beach, Florida.

Stanley Greenebaum, A&S ’48, a wholesale appliance executive, died July 8 in Baltimore.

Gerhardt W. “Gus” Strohsacker, Bus ’61, who retired from Western Electric Corporation, died on August 10 in Baltimore.

Newsmaker

Avrum L. Katcher, Med ’48, HS ’50, a pediatrician, died June 4 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Robert H. Marshall, A&S ’48 (MA), an IBM executive, died in El Paso, Texas, on August 20.

Jason Hsu, Engr ’09, ’10 (MSE), Stephanie Huang, Engr ’09, Christopher Komanski, Engr ’10 (MSE), Evan Luxon, Engr ’10, and Nicolas Martinez, Engr ’10 (MSE)—aka Cortical Concepts—rang the closing bell of the NASDAQ stock exchange on Monday, August 23. The team is in the process of marketing a device they invented, as part of the winning entry in the Wharton Business Plan Competition, to increase the success rate of spinal surgery in patients with osteoporosis.

John Buttrick Root, SAIS ’48, an oil business executive, died July 9 in Los Angeles. Ellis S. “Skip” White, Engr ’48, a business owner, died July 27 in Sarasota, Florida. Robert Thompson “Thom” Frost, A&S ’49, ’53 (PhD), a physicist in the aerospace industry who lived in Lenoxville, Pennsylvania, died February 8, 2009. Charles R. Higdon Jr., A&S ’49, an engineer from Baltimore, passed away on May 31.

Michael Altschul, A&S ’62 (PhD), a history professor at Case Western Reserve University, died July 8 in Cleveland. David S. Kiernan, A&S ’62, a U.S. banking committee official, died on August 4 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Christopher Jonas Heller, Med ’63, a surgeon and Vietnam veteran, died August 4 in Tucson, Arizona. Helen Shea Wells, Ed ’63, a teacher who was active in the arts community, died on July 8 in Boca Raton, Florida. Joel Abraham Cordish, A&S ’65, a Baltimore native who emigrated to Israel, died in Jerusalem on July 29. Alfred Solomon Waldstein, A&S ’65, a teacher and anthropologist, died in Boston on August 3. James Vincent Simonette, A&S ’66 (MLA), a public school educator, died May 21 in Baltimore. Andrew F. Eikenberg, Engr ’67, died April 21 in Harvest, Alabama. William Doyle Cherry, Bus ’68, a Westinghouse senior engineer, died July 11 in Silver Spring, Maryland. Christopher Hugh Molloy, A&S ’68, founder of an art gallery in Evanston, Illinois, died on July 6.

Robert Allen “Bob” Foster, A&S ’50, a pastor and retired U.S. Army colonel, died on May 18 in Winston Salem, North Carolina.

Henry H. Bohlman, Med ’69 (PGF), HS ’70, an orthopedic surgeon, died on May 26 in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

W. Benjamin Whitten, Peab ’50 (Cert), ’53, ’57 (MM), a pianist who had studied with Leon Fleisher, died on June 13 in Philadelphia.

Morgan S. Gibson Jr., Bus ’71, an accountant, died on July 24 in Royal Palm Beach, Florida.

Harry Debelius, A&S ’51, of Madrid, died on May 12.

Karen Nelson, A&S ’73 (MA), an economics teacher, died on July 30 in Northampton, Massachusetts.

John Hedeman, Med ’51, HS ’54, PGF ’55, a doctor and World War II veteran, died July 29 in Salisbury, Maryland.

Merrill Egorin, A&S ’69, Med ’73, HS ’75, an oncologist and researcher, died in Pittsburgh on August 7.

Abdulmonem M. Aly, SPH ’74, died on April 14 in Egypt.

Milton Prystowsky, HS ’51, a pediatric cardiologist, died in White Plains, New York, on May 10.

Thomas Vary, A&S ’76, a professor at The Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, died July 8 in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

Arnold Lewis Rose, A&S ’51, an ophthalmologist and psychotherapist, died May 15 in Secaucus, New Jersey.

Thomas E. Kerry, A&S ’79 (MA), who retired from the Department of the Navy, died on June 21 in Lexington Park, Maryland.

William B. Jackson, SPH ’52 (ScD), a Bowling Green State University biology professor, died July 15 in Chicago.

Angela Gugliotta, A&S ’89 (MA), an environmental historian and college lecturer, died June 1 in Chicago.

Kenneth N. Weaver, A&S ’52 (MA), ’54 (PhD), former director of the Maryland Geological Survey, died July 7 in Timonium, Maryland.

Glenn Lapp, Nurs, ’95, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, died on August 5 while on a humanitarian mission with a medical team in Afghanistan.

Lois A. Hessler, Nurs ’54, a nurse who lived in Kissimmee, Florida, and Colorado Springs, Colorado, died on May 30.

Gaye Monaghan, Ed ’96 (MS), an educator and school guidance counselor, died June 9 in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Barbara C. McClain, Nurs ’54, of Tampa, Florida, passed away on May 4.

Todd Varness, SPH ’01, Med ’02, a pediatrician, died August 2 in Madison, Wisconsin.

Subbarao V. Rama Rao, SPH ’54, a public health expert, passed away on June 13 in India. Agust H. Helgason, HS ’56, a pathologist who spent most of his career in Houston, died on August 6 in his homeland of Iceland. George Udvarhelyi, Med ’57 (PGF), HS ’58, a Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon who established the Office of Cultural Affairs at the Johns Hopkins Medical School, died June 22 in Baltimore. A. Jay Block, A&S ’58, Med ’62, ’70 (PGF), HS ’66, one of the fathers of sleep medicine, died on December 5, 2009, in Gainesville, Florida. Harold Byerly, Engr ’58, a former engineering instructor at Penn State University, died on June 17 in Sarasota, Florida. James Michael, A&S ’58, a retired psychologist and consultant, died on August 2 in Rochester, New York. Robert A. Partridge, A&S ’58, of Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, died on May 22. Mary Wimberly Diggdon Wheeler, Nurs ’58, a nurse and social worker, died July 26 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. David B. Greenberg, Engr ’59, a retired chemical engineering professor, died in Cincinnati on July 25.

66 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

Alumni News & Notes Alumni Association President: Ray Snow, A&S ’70 Editors: Nora Koch (koch@jhu.edu), Kirsten Lavin (klavin@jhu.edu) Class Notes Editor: Lisa Belman (magnotes@jhu.edu) Contributing Writer: Lew Diuguid, SAIS ’63 Contact us at: The JHU Office of Alumni Relations San Martin Center, Second Floor 3400 N. Charles Street Baltimore, MD 21218-2696 410-516-0363/1-800-JHU-JHU1 (5481) alumni@jhu.edu alumni.jhu.edu Please send class notes to magnotes@jhu.edu. By submitting a class note, you give Johns Hopkins University permission to edit and publish your information in Johns Hopkins Magazine and in online publications. The Alumni News & Notes section of Johns Hopkins Magazine is made possible by your annual Alumni Association Membership dues. Annual dues are $50, $25 for classes 2006–2010. Lifetime membership dues are $1,000 or four annual installments of $250 each. For more information, visit alumni.jhu.edu/dues.

Golomb’s Answers

“Calendar Oddities” Solutions Puzzle on page 15. A. 1. These holidays have the same number for the day and the month: 1/1, 2/2, 5/5, 6/6, and 11/11. 2. These holidays have a fixed day of the week but not a fixed date: Monday, Tuesday, Sunday, Monday, Thursday. 3. For these holidays, the day of the month exceeds 12, so dates written, e.g. 3/17 or 17/3, are unambiguous even if one doesn’t know whether the American or European notation is being used. B. Nodal, 27.21222 days long, determined relative to the node of the moon’s orbit. Tropical, 27.32158 days long, determined relative to the equinox. Sidereal, 27.32166 days long, determined relative to the fixed stars. Anomalistic, 27.55455 days long, determined relative to perigee of the moon’s orbit. Synodic, 29.53059 days long, relative to the sun (the time from one new moon to the next). All these “lengths” are very long-term averages, since individual orbits of the moon around the Earth vary considerably. The synodic month, from one new moon to the next, is the basis for all major lunar (e.g., the Islamic) and luni-solar (e.g., the Chinese and the Hebrew) calendars. The sidereal month is the time it takes for the moon to appear in the same position relative to the fixed stars, but by this time the Earth has moved forward, and it takes the moon 2.2+ additional days to catch up. Except for astronomers, few people pay attention to the other three “months.” C. 1. The dominical letter is one of the seven letters from A to G used to denote Sundays in a given year by the Church. The date of the first Sunday

in January (1st for A, 2nd for B, etc.) determines the dominical letter for the entire year. 2. An ephemeris (Greek for “over a day”) is a daily listing of the positions of the sun, moon, and planets for a particular location on Earth. 3. To intercalate is to insert a “leap element” (e.g., a leap day in the Julian or Gregorian calendar, a leap month in the Chinese or Hebrew calendar) in a “leap year.” 4. The adjective bissextile means “relating to a leap year,” so named because the Romans inserted a second (“bis”) day to repeat the sixth (“sext”) day before the calends of March. This “leap day” was later moved to February 29. 5. The calendrical meaning of an embolism is the unit of time (such as a leap day or leap month) inserted into a calendar to produce regularity. (I believe this meaning is older than the medical meaning of an unwanted insertion, such as a blood clot or air bubble, into a blood vessel.) D. 1. The Romans originally started their year with March, so September, October, November, and December were, at that time, the seventh, eighth, ninth, and 10th months, respectively. (Having the leap day in February thus was, originally, at the end of the year.) When January was made the first month, the old names stuck. 2. The Islamic year consists of 12 synodic lunar months, with no extra “leap months,” and 12 x 29.53059 (see part B. above) is 354.36708 days, nearly 11 days less than a solar year of 365.2425 days. (Here I’ve used the Gregorian calendar approximation to the solar year.) 3. In the Northern Hemisphere, the “summer solstice” is the longest day of the year, and would be the middle of summer if Earth’s climate responded instantly to the sun. However, the atmosphere, the oceans, and even the land masses act as temperature buffers, and

it takes about half a “solar season” for the Earth’s temperature to respond. 4. Tsarist Russia remained on the Julian calendar until after the Bolshevik revolution, whereby dates were 13 days later than in the Gregorian calendar by that time. Thus the “October Revolution” occurred in Julian October, but in Gregorian November. 5. Just as the French Revolution replaced older systems of weights and measures with the metric system, they also introduced a new calendar, with names of months derived from weather and climate conditions. Thus Thermidor was a hot summer month. When the French Republican Calendar was abandoned in 1805, most people were happy to forget it, but the name “thermidor” survives in “lobster thermidor,” and is sometimes used by historians to refer to the time when a revolution loses its zeal.

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Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010 67

H o w To :

Land a Robot on an Asteroid 1

in the next 15 years. The first step is to land a robot on an asteroid by 2015, says Andrew Cheng, chief scientist in the Applied Physics Laboratory’s Space Department who will oversee APL’s part of the project. That mission will give the agency more of a read on how to devise a subsequent manned landing. —Michael Anft

Find the right rock. “There’s a whole team at NASA arguing about what exactly that is,” says Cheng. Among the considerations are the rock’s size, shape, orbit, and rate of spin. “It needs to be big enough for a craft to land on and an astronaut to get around on.”

Develop a robot. Private industry will offer up the rocket (at the cost of $100 million to $160 million), while NASA scientists focus on designing the robot that will measure the asteroid’s composition, gravity, and temperature, as well as the presence of ice, and nearby cosmic radiation.

Send the whole thing into space. Scientists will chart a safe route—one that exposes the craft to as little radiation as possible. Then, after the craft is launched into the ether, it and its robot payload will travel for up to a year before landing.

68 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2010

Put the robot to work. The robot will collect information on the asteroid’s surface and interior, with a particular eye toward potential resources, and send data back via radio transmitter. It will also scout out a decent landing spot for humans, says Cheng.

Wesley Bedrosian

ast spring, when President Obama announced “a new direction” for NASA, he wasn’t entertaining visions of space travel to Mars or a return to the moon. Instead, he and his advisers homed in on near-Earth asteroids. NASA now is pursuing a mandate to land a human on one of the 6,500 space rocks that enter Earth’s neighborhood

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a Joy to Change the World Joy is where you find it. Every day people across the Johns Hopkins community give of their energy, their intellect and their fortune to advance humanity in small and large ways, and we have fun doing it. In this season of giving, thank you for giving us joy. giving.jhu.edu 800-548-5422

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