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Covering Homewood, East Baltimore, Peabody,

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SAIS, APL and other campuses throughout the

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December 5, 2011

The newspaper of The Johns Hopkins University

Volume 41 No. 14

S Y M P O S I U M

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

Ratcheting up teaching of sciences

Space surgeons

By Greg Rienzi

The Gazette

Continued on page 4

2

will kirk / homewoodphoto.jhu.edu

E

arly in 2012, science education will get its day—and then some.

A group of nationally renowned science education leaders will speak at Johns Hopkins next month at the first institutionwide Symposium on Teaching Excellence in the Sciences.

Daylong The symposium seeks to advance the session university’s Gatewill gather way Sciences Initiative, a yearlong effort launched this experts to summer to promote share ideas wider adoption of successful teaching techniques already in use and to encourage the development of innovative new approaches to learning.

Lloyd B. Minor, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, spearheaded the effort that seeks to augment, enhance, rejigger and, in some cases, reinvent foundation science courses at Johns Hopkins.

The symposium is designed to demonstrate the university’s commitment to promoting significant, positive improvement in gateway science education, and encourage innovation in course, program or curricular design. Participants will gain an understanding of how students learn and what excites their minds, according to the symposium’s organizers.

The event, which is open to all faculty, students and staff, will feature keynote talks, discussions, presentations and interactive workshops to highlight pedagogical priorities at Johns Hopkins.

It will be held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 20, in Hodson Hall on the Homewood campus.

The symposium will also include a poster session to spotlight the recipients of the inaugural Gateway Sciences Initiative grants, to be announced later this month. The goal of the grant program is to identify and fund a set of pilot projects that will both improve current gateway

In the Robotorium of Hackerman Hall, doctoral students Tian Xia and Jonathan Bohren use a da Vinci medical console (behind Bohren) to manipulate an industrial robot located at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Medical robotics experts help advance NASA’s ‘satellite surgery’ project

By Phil Sneiderman

Homewood

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ohns Hopkins engineers, recognized as experts in medical robotics, have turned their attention skyward to help NASA with a space dilemma: How can the agency fix valuable satellites that are breaking down or running out of fuel? Sending a human repair crew into space is costly, dangerous and sometimes not even possible for satellites in a distant orbit.

One answer? Send robots to the rescue and give them a little longdistance human help. Johns Hopkins scientists say that the same technology that allows doctors to steer a machine through delicate abdominal surgery could someday help an operator on Continued on page 5

R E P O R T

Losing weight, keeping it off: Two programs that work Research finds options for obese patients that lead to sustainable weight loss

By Stephanie Desmon

Johns Hopkins Medicine

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bese patients enrolled in a weightloss program delivered over the phone by health coaches and with

In Brief

Piero Weiss tribute; Barry Levinson films at Homewood; John Lipsky of IMF joins SAIS

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website and physician support lost weight and kept it off for two years, according to new Johns Hopkins research. The program was just as effective as a weight-loss program that involved in-person coaching sessions.

A report on the research was published Nov. 15 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Roughly 40 percent of obese patients enrolled in each of the two weight-loss programs lost at least 5 percent of their body weight, an amount associated with real

C A L E N D AR

Music at Peabody; Brown v. Board of Education and Baltimore; blood drive

health benefits such as lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol and better diabetes control, the researchers say.

“Until now, doctors had no proven strategy to help their patients lose weight and keep it off. Now, we have two programs that work,” said study leader Lawrence J. Appel, a professor of medicine and director of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Continued on page 8

10 Job Opportunities 10 Notices 11 Classifieds

2 2011 2 THE THE GAZETTE GAZETTE •• December August 15,5,2011 I N B R I E F

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he Maryland Film Festival is celebrating the films of native son Barry Levinson with a week of screenings of the director’s Baltimore-based films that culminates at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 10, with the 30th-anniversary showing of Diner in Shriver Hall Auditorium on Johns Hopkins’ Homewood campus. Levinson and some members of the cast—which includes Kevin Bacon, Ellen Barkin, Tim Daly, Steve Guttenberg, Paul Reiser, Mickey Rourke and Daniel Stern—will be on hand to discuss the film.

Also being screened on the Homewood campus are Diner Guys (2:30 p.m. Dec. 10 in Hodson Auditorium) and The Band That Wouldn’t Die (7 p.m. Dec. 9 in Hodson Auditorium). Other films will be shown at the Charles Theater.

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tribute to the prominent musicologist and longtime Peabody faculty member Piero Weiss will be held at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 11, in Peabody’s Miriam A. Friedberg Concert Hall.

“A Celebration of the Life of Piero Weiss” will include performances and remarks by students and friends, including Leon Fleisher, Gary Graffman, Seymour Lipkin and Richard Taruskin.

Weiss, who died of pneumonia on Oct. 2, had been a member of the Conservatory faculty since 1985. At the time of his death, he was 83 and still teaching.

ohn Lipsky, who recently retired from the International Monetary Fund, will join SAIS on Jan. 1 as a distinguished visiting scholar with the school’s International Economics Program.

Lipsky served for five years as the IMF’s first deputy managing director, the organization’s No. 2 leadership role. Most recently, he was a special adviser to managing director Christine Lagarde, helping to direct the fund’s preparations for last month’s G20 Leaders Summit in Cannes, France.

“John’s service at the IMF coincided with the most challenging era for the international economy in the past 70 years. During this historic time, he was a dedicated and effective advocate for international cooperation and coordination to heal and restore the global economy,” said SAIS Dean Jessica P. Einhorn in making the announcement. “Over the course of his distinguished career in both the private and public sectors, he has earned the respect and regard of many leaders around the world. His enthusiasm for joining SAIS as an active member of our community of scholars and students offers us opportunities for engagement through research [and] teaching, as well as outside speakers and programs of great interest,” she said.

Before rejoining the IMF in 2006, Lipsky spent more than 20 years in the private sector, including serving as JPMorgan’s chief economist and Chase Manhattan Bank’s chief economist and director of research.

Earlier he had spent a decade at the IMF, where he helped manage the fund’s exchange rate surveillance procedure and analyzed developments in the international capital market.

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he United States Agency for International Development has awarded Jhpiego a cooperative agreement of $65 million for Support for Service DeliveryExcellence in Malawi. Over the course of the project, SSD-E will reach 8 million Malawians with priority essential health-package services through a phased approach that achieves 90 percent coverage in 15 districts.

The goals of the project are to ensure that service delivery is “reaching the unreached” in communities; health surveillance assistance and volunteers are working together to optimize service delivery; all providers in target districts are actively supported by a clinical mentor and have strengthened their essential health services and clinical and interpersonal skills; performance-based incentives are employed at multiple levels to stimulate quality, demand and access; and the Ministry of Health has capable

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

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he Community Psychiatry Program at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center has been designated a Recovery Center of Excellence by the state of Maryland. Community Psychiatry—one of only four programs in the state to win the award—was presented with a plaque that acknowledged the program’s hard work to “create a recovery culture within the state of Maryland.”

John Lipsky, formerly of IMF, joins econ program at SAIS

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district-level partners to outsource future community mobilization, health promotion and support for service delivery functions.

SSD-E will be implemented by Jhpiego with Save the Children, CARE, Plan International and Broad Branch Associates, coupled with Malawian partners. The effort is designed to help the country successfully reduce fertility and population growth, lower the risk of HIV and reduce maternal, infant and under-5 mortality rates.

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

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

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

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December 5, 2011 • THE GAZETTE

3

Presumed consent no answer to solving organ shortage in U.S.

By Stephanie Desmon

Johns Hopkins Medicine

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hanging the organ donation process in this country from opt in—by checking a box on a driver’s license application, for example—to opt out, which presumes someone’s willingness to donate after death unless he explicitly objects while alive, would not likely increase the donation rate in the United States, new Johns Hopkins research suggests.

Some organ donation advocates have pushed for a switch to an opt-out system, arguing that it would be a positive step toward addressing the nation’s profound organ shortage. They say that most people support donation but never formally record their wishes, and that an opt-out system— known commonly as presumed consent— might ease the burden of decision making on grieving families at the time of death. Many thousands of people die every year waiting for organs that never come, and many viable organs are never made available for donation.

“Opt out is not the magic bullet. It will not be the magic answer we have been looking for,” said Dorry L. Segev, an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and leader of the study published online in the journal Transplantation. “With opt out, the perception becomes, ‘We will take your organs unless you take the time to fill out a form.’

That’s a dangerous perception to have. We only want to use donated organs from people who intended to donate.”

Enforcing an opt-out policy raises tricky ethical questions and could challenge the relationship between the transplant community and the general public, which should be mutually supportive, Segev adds.

Segev and his team conducted in-depth interviews with transplant experts in 13 European nations with presumed-consent legislation. They found that despite the laws, the process of organ donation in those countries does not differ dramatically from the process in countries—such as the United States—that require explicit consent. They also found that the United States ranked third among the nations surveyed in rates of

organ donation from the deceased, with 26.3 deceased donors per million population.

Only Spain (34.1) and Portugal (26.7) did better.

Brian J. Boyarsky, the Johns Hopkins researcher who conducted the interviews, said, “It does not appear that by simply having presumed-consent legislation on the books that donation rates will rise.”

Segev says that in the United States physicians will approach family members and ask whether they would like to donate their loved one’s organs whether or not that person is declared an organ donor prior to death. The family gets to make the final decision, regardless of the deceased’s stated intentions, Segev says.

He and his colleagues learned that even in countries with presumed consent, where doctors are legally permitted to transplant organs, donation is discussed with the potential donor’s family at the time of

sent have much lower rates of organ donation than the United States, he notes.

Segev says that there are still lessons to learn from countries, such as Spain, whose donation rate far surpasses that of the United States. In Spain, every hospital has dedicated physicians who are knowledgeable about transplant issues and who screen for potential donors, manage their care and approach families. He says he believes that these physicians, not the mere existence of presumed consent, are a key reason why Spain has a higher rate of donation.

“We need to foster more awareness of

Keeping you informed: Survey to gauge internal communications

Related websites

By Greg Rienzi

Comprehensive Transplant Center at Johns Hopkins:

The Gazette

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www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ transplant Dorry Segev:

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

death. Six of the 13 countries actually have a legal requirement that doctors speak with relatives. This is done to be transparent with the family about the donation process and to obtain a complete medical and social history of the potential donor.

Donation will not proceed if the family objects, just as in the United States, in all but one of the countries surveyed (Portugal), the researchers found. This is because of a fear of negative press, the participants told Segev’s team, and a desire to respect the wishes of the grieving family so as to prevent psychological harm.

Implementing presumed-consent legislation, Segev argues, would take a huge amount of time and energy with minimal payoff. Many countries with presumed con-

transplantation and transplant issues to procure more organs for lifesaving transplants rather than force people to donate their relatives’ organs if they fail to opt out before death,” he said.

The most important thing, Segev says, “is that people need to be very clear with their next of kin while they are still alive about whether or not they want to be organ donors. That’s who will ultimately make the decision.”

Other Johns Hopkins researchers involved in the study are Erin C. Hall, Neha A. Deshpande, R. Lorie Ros, Robert A. Montgomery and Donald M. Steinwachs.

here and how do you get your Johns Hopkins news? Do you want to know even more about what the university and its people are doing? The university’s Office of Communications would like to know.

The office is launching a survey today to better understand the effectiveness of current internal communications activities and build new strategies for sharing information, news and stories of the university.

A link to the survey, which is anonymous and takes only a few minutes to complete, went out to all faculty and staff via a broadcast email.

“There is no better way to gauge effectiveness than to ask for honest feedback,” said Glenn Bieler, the university’s new vice president for communications, who assumed his post in July. “I encourage all faculty and staff to take the survey. The more responses we receive, the better we know what we are good at and where we can improve.”

Those who complete the survey by the Dec. 14 deadline will be directed to a separate page to enter a drawing to win an Apple iPad 2. The survey results will be published in January, with the raffle winner announced at that time.

Johns Hopkins University currently employs roughly 28,000 people, spread out over 10 divisions and multiple campuses in Baltimore, Laurel, Md., Montgomery County, Washington, D.C., and abroad. Bieler said that reaching this sizable and widespread audience has its challenges.

“How do we break down inevitable communications silos that get formed because we are all busy doing our dayto-day work? That is the question we often ask ourselves in the Office of Communications,” he said. “We hope that this survey will provide us with some potential clues for implementing communications that better engage our faculty and staff across our varied campuses.”

If you did not receive an email about the survey, go to http://tinyurl.com/ jhu-comm-survey.

R E S E A R C H

Packaging can sell products but also cause consumers to use less B y P at r i c k E r c o l a n o

Carey Business School

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t’s a truism of business: Packaging sells the product. But a new study from a team led by a Johns Hopkins University business professor has found that the same persuasive packaging that can lead consumers to buy a particular product can also cause them to use less of it once they take it home, thus reducing its long-term sales.

In the paper for the Journal of Marketing Research, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School assistant professor Meng Zhu and her co-authors note that previous academic studies have established a link between strong marketing cues and consumer choice; however, the influence of such cues on postpurchase use has gone uninvestigated, until now.

“It’s a topic worth examining, given the fact that personal consumption makes up about 70 percent of U.S. gross domestic product,” lead author Zhu said in an interview.

“The results made us wonder whether manufacturers are even aware that their success in promoting a product’s effectiveness might be self-defeating. That is, consumers become so convinced of the power of a boldly packaged product that they judge they can use less of it. Conversely, they tend

Meng Zhu of the Carey Business School

to use more of a product when the packaging lacks strong cues of effectiveness,” said Zhu, whose colleagues in the research were Darron M. Billeter, of Brigham Young University, and J. Jeffrey Inman, of the University of Pittsburgh.

The paper, “The ‘Double-Edged Sword’ of Signaling Effectiveness: When Salient Cues Curb Post-Purchase Consumption,” was published online in October and is scheduled for the February 2012 print edition of the JMR. For the study, six experiments were con-

ducted with students from three U.S. universities as the participants. The aim was to determine how various packaging cues influenced perceptions of effectiveness and the likely use of three fictitious products: a teeth-whitening rinse, an insect repellant and a toilet-bowl cleaner.

In an experiment with the teeth whitener, participants were shown two packages—one that depicted a smiling face with a glittering smile, and the other with no picture.

While a significantly high number of the respondents said they perceived the product with the smiling face as more effective, they indicated that they would use it at a rate 42 percent below that of the product with no picture. Similarly, a bug repellant packaged with a picture of a dead bug was judged more effective than one with a live bug on the box, yet the participants predicted that they would use less of the dead-bug product, compared with the live-bug product they had deemed less powerful.

The same process emerges when brand names are involved, the paper asserts.

Participants were asked to consider two toilet-bowl cleaners, BalanceClean and BalanceGreen. The product with “clean” in its name was viewed as more effective, but its predicted use was 20 percent below that of the cleaner carrying the “green” brand.

Altogether, the paper concludes, these results show “the ironic effects” of packaging cues that can quickly move products off store shelves but cause them to sit longer on household shelves. Zhu and her team offer possible solutions, such as employing packaging cues that stimulate purchase without strongly implying effectiveness, or using effectiveness cues in advertisements and outer packaging but removing them from the bottle or tube that contains the product.

Just how susceptible consumers are to marketing cues depends on their level of “cognition,” Zhu said. Shoppers with low cognition generally don’t seek out detailed information about a product and are more easily swayed by cues of effectiveness. In contrast, high-cognition consumers are naturally more inquisitive and less likely to be influenced by such signals.

“People tend to be lazy,” Zhu said. “When we’re shopping, we don’t generally study the ingredients on the package. We look for the salient cues, such as brand names and strong images. Those things are easy to process, and whether they’re presented in a bold fashion or not makes a huge difference in how we judge products.”

For a PDF of the JHM article, go to www .journals.marketingpower.com/doi/pdf/10 .1509/jmr.09.0531.

4 2011 4 THE THE GAZETTE GAZETTE •• December August 15,5,2011

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courses and point the way to potentially larger changes in pedagogy, course and program design, and instructional methodologies.

Minor said that the symposium aims to energize and empower the university community to participate in this major endeavor.

“The Gateway Sciences Initiative has caused so much excitement among our faculty and students,” Minor said. “It is a vitally important undertaking, and I am thrilled with the way it is bringing the campuses together and unleashing so many innovative ideas and creative ways to improve student learning.”

Scott Zeger, vice provost for research and a professor of biostatistics in the Bloomberg School, organized the symposium and has been coordinating much of the GIS efforts.

The four keynote speakers are Jo Handelsman from Yale, David Botstein from Prince­ ton, Eric Mazur from Harvard and Freeman Hrabowski from UMBC. Handelsman is nationally known for her efforts to improve science education and increase the participation of women and minorities in science at the university level. She is co-author of two books about teaching, Entering Mentoring (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005) and Scientific Teaching (W.H. Freeman, 2006). In 2011, she received the U.S. Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Mentoring.

An expert in the field of metagenomics and genetics, Handelsman last year was named the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, and director of the Center for Scientific Teaching, at Yale University. Handelsman also co-directs the National Academies Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education in Biology and is a member of President Barack Obama’s Council of Advisors in Science and Technology. Her talk will focus on

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the council’s work, and issues of retention in research courses.

Botstein has made fundamental contributions to modern genetics, including the discovery of many yeast and bacterial genes and the establishment of key techniques that are commonly used today. Following faculty appointments at MIT and Stanford, he joined Princeton University in 2003 to serve as director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and as the Anthony B. Evnin Professor of Genomics.

At Princeton, Botstein has developed a new interdisciplinary science curriculum for students intending to pursue careers in scientific fields, based on the expectation that science in the future will span the classical disciplines. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.

The topic of Botstein’s talk will be the shortcomings of medical school entrance requirements and how they impact undergraduate science education.

Mazur, the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics and dean of Applied Physics at Harvard University, is an internationally renowned scientist in the field of optical physics. In 1990, he began developing peer instruction, an interactive method for teaching large lecture courses. Peer instruction is a process that makes students collaboratively think through arguments being developed during lectures, and focuses their attention on underlying concepts. Lectures are interspersed with conceptual questions designed to expose common difficulties in understanding the material. In 1997, he published Peer Instruction: A User’s Manual (Benjamin Cummings).

Mazur’s talk is titled “Confessions of a Converted Lecturer: Strategies for Embedding Active Learning Into Large Lecture Courses.”

Hrabowski, the president of UMBC since 1992, has focused his research and publications on science and math education, with special emphasis on minority participation and performance. He has received numerous honors, including the prestigious McGraw Prize in Education and the U.S. Presidential Award for Excellence

Study affirms ‘Mediterranean diet’ improves heart health Olive oil and nuts boost insulin action, reduce heart disease risks

By Stephanie Desmon

Johns Hopkins Medicine

A

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in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. In 2008, he was named one of America’s Best Leaders by U.S. News & World Report. The Carnegie Corp. recently honored Hrabowski with a 2011 Academic Leadership Award.

A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Hrabowski holds honorary degrees from more than 20 institutions, including Johns Hopkins. He serves as a consultant to the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Academies, and universities and school systems nationally.

He will talk about how to motivate teachers and students, and develop scientists of the future. (Hrabowski will also be the keynote speaker at a Dec. 15 program sponsored by Johns Hopkins’ Mentoring to Inspire Diversity in Science group to focus on underrepresented minority participation in science and technology. The event will be held from 9 to 10 a.m. in Hodson Hall.)

Earlier this summer, Provost Minor formed a 21-member faculty steering committee— co-chaired by Steven David, vice dean for undergraduate education and a professor of political science in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, and Marie Diener-West, director of the Master of Public Health program and professor of biostatistics in the Bloomberg School of Public Health—to lead and guide the Gateway Sciences Initiative. The committee was charged with working throughout the year to identify and promote best practices and to develop recommendations for a strategic approach to continuous improvement in gateway science courses in all divisions.

The initiative defines gateway science courses as those that establish the necessary fundamental knowledge base for subsequent or more specialized subject area study and research. These courses include introductory classes in biology, chemistry, physics, psychology, statistics, bioinformatics and others with a basic natural science or quantitative focus in fields such as medicine, nursing and public health. G For more information on the Gateway Sciences Initiative, and to register for the symposium, go to www.jhu.edu/provost.

team of Johns Hopkins researchers has uncovered further evidence of the benefits of a balanced diet that replaces white bread and pasta carbohydrates with unsaturated fat from avocados, olive oil and nuts—foods typical of the so-called “Mediterranean diet.”

In a report prepared for the American Heart Association’s scientific sessions held this month in Orlando, Fla., the Johns Hopkins investigators say that swapping out certain foods can improve heart health in those at risk for cardiovascular disease, even if the dietary changes aren’t coupled with weight loss.

“The introduction of the right kind of fat into a healthy diet is another tool to reduce the risk of future heart disease,” said Meghana Gadgil, a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who presented the research.

Gadgil and her colleagues analyzed data from the OmniHeart Trial, which studied the cardiovascular effects of three different balanced diets on 164 people with mild hypertension but no diabetes. The

researchers compared the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar and maintain healthy insulin levels while on a carbohydraterich diet, a protein-rich diet and a diet rich in unsaturated fats. People whose bodies fail to effectively use insulin usually develop type 2 diabetes, which is a major risk factor for heart disease.

The researchers found that a generally balanced diet higher in unsaturated fats such as those in avocados, olive oil and nuts improves insulin use significantly more than a diet high in carbohydrates, particularly such refined ones as white bread and pasta. The preferred diet is very similar to the Mediterranean diet, inspired by the foods of southern Italy and Greece and emphasizing healthy fats, fruits and vegetables.

Participants in the study were fed each of the three diets for six weeks in a row, with two to four weeks off in between.

Blood samples were collected after fasting periods in weeks four and six of each diet and used to monitor insulin and glucose levels. The study was designed to keep participants at their starting weights. “A lot of studies have looked at how the body becomes better at using insulin when you lose weight,” Gadgil said. “We kept the weight stable so we could isolate the effects of the macronutrients. What we found is that you can begin to see a beneficial impact on heart health even before weight loss.”

Other Johns Hopkins researchers in­­ volved in the study are Cheryl Anderson, Lawrence J. Appel and Edgar R. Miller III.

December 5, 2011 • THE GAZETTE

5

Evidence grows for value of calcium test to gauge heart attack risk

By Ellen Beth Levitt

Johns Hopkins Medicine

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etermining a person’s risk for a heart attack based on age, blood pressure, cholesterol levels and smoking history is often not clear-cut, so doctors may order a test called cardiac calcium scoring.

The test uses a CT scan to look for a buildup of calcium in the walls of the coronary arteries and can be a valuable tool to determine a patient’s heart disease risk. But it’s not usually offered to people under age 45 because, in general, younger adults are assumed to be at low risk.

A new Johns Hopkins study, which was presented as a poster Nov. 16 at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Orlando, Fla., indicates that the calcium scoring test may be useful for certain patients under age 45 and also for selected people over age 75, in addition to those in between. According to the study’s findings, younger people with a higher amount of calcium had a much greater incidence of heart disease compared with elderly people whose arteries were calcium-free.

“We found that the risk of a heart attack or the need for coronary stents or bypass surgery was eight times greater among people under age 45 who had high levels of calcium in their coronary arteries compared with patients over age 75 whose vessels did not contain calcium,” said Michael Blaha, one of the study authors, from the

Space Continued from page 1 Earth fix a faulty fuel line on the far side of the moon.

A brief preview of this technology was presented Nov. 29, when two graduate students at Johns Hopkins’ Homewood campus in Baltimore used a modified da Vinci medical console to manipulate an industrial robot at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., about 30 miles away. The demonstration took place during a tour of Goddard by three members of Maryland’s congressional delegation: U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski and U.S. Reps. Donna Edwards and Steny Hoyer.

In this demonstration, the da Vinci console was the same type that doctors use to conduct robotic surgery on cancer and cardiac patients. It included a 3D eyepiece that allowed the operator in Baltimore to see and guide the robot at Goddard. It also provided haptic, or “touch,” feedback to the operator.

The goal, Johns Hopkins engineers say, is to adapt some robotic operating room strategies to help NASA perform long-distance “surgery” on ailing satellites.

“We’re using the expertise we’ve develPS-2011 JHU Gazette 11-21.qxd

Johns Hopkins Heart and Vascular Institute.

The researchers studied 6,800 participants from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis who had a calcium scoring test without a diagnosis of heart disease and were followed for six years. The researchers evaluated the rate of heart attacks, need for stents or bypass surgery, or death due to heart disease, in conjunction with the extent of calcium in study participants’ coronary arteries.

They concluded that chronological age and health of heart arteries (arterial age) are not the same, and that you cannot assume someone’s risk is higher or lower based on age.

“Our study indicates that the calcium scoring test may benefit both younger and older people in terms of refining their true heart disease risk. It can help us identify a subset of younger people at higher risk who should make substantial lifestyle modifications and possibly take cholesterol-lowering medication and aspirin. For older individuals without calcium in their arteries, it means they do not need routinely prescribed cholesterol-lowering medications or aspirin because they are at a lower risk of a heart attack,” said Rajesh Tota-Maharaj, the lead author of the study, which is titled “Coronary Artery Calcium Predicts Coronary Heart Disease Events, Even at the Extremes of Age: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis.”

Calcium deposits form in the later stages of atherosclerosis, a process in which cholesterol plaques develop within arteries that

supply blood to the heart. Higher levels of calcium usually indicate more severe atherosclerosis, leading to blockages that can starve the heart muscle of blood. This process can result in heart attacks, and even death in some instances.

In a related study of MESA participants, which was also presented at the 2011 AHA Scientific Sessions, Johns Hopkins researchers compared the predictive value of coronary calcium among people with no heart disease risk factors as well as those with several risk factors. People in both of those groups normally are not offered a calcium scoring test.

“We found that the risk of a heart attack or the need for stents or bypass surgery was three times higher among people with no traditional risk factors for heart disease if they had moderate levels of calcium in their coronary arteries, compared with individuals with three or more traditional risk factors whose arteries do not have calcium,” said lead author Michael Silverman. Traditional risk factors include smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes.

Silverman’s study is titled “Impact of Coronary Artery Calcium on Coronary Heart Disease Events in Individuals at the Extremes of Traditional Risk Factor Burden: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA).”

“We can stop the progression and even modestly reverse the development of atherosclerosis with lifestyle modifications that include eating a healthy diet, exercising,

quitting smoking and taking cholesterollowering medications,” said Roger S. Blumenthal, professor of medicine and director of the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease. Blumenthal, who is a senior author on both studies, added, “It is for these reasons that it is important to identify patients who are at risk so that we can help them take steps to prevent a heart attack or stroke.”

MESA is an NIH-funded longitudinal study at the Johns Hopkins Heart and Vascular Institute and five other sites across the United States aimed at assessing the relationship among various risk factors, early atherosclerosis and later development of heart attack and stroke.

Other authors on “Coronary Artery Calcium Predicts Coronary Heart Disease Events, Even at the Extremes of Age” are Ron Blankstein, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Leslee J. Shaw, of Emory University; Matthew J. Budoff, of Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute; and Khurram Nasir, of Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center.

Other authors on “Impact of Coronary Artery Calcium on Coronary Heart Disease Events in Individuals at the Extremes of Traditional Risk Factor Burden” are Matthew J. Budoff, of Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute; Ron Blankstein, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Christopher T. Sibley, of the National Institutes of Health; and Khurram Nasir, of Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center.

oped in medical robotics technology and applying it to some of the remote-controlled tasks that NASA wants space robots to perform in repairing and refueling satellites,” said Louis Whitcomb, a Johns Hopkins mechanical engineering professor who was at Goddard to help supervise the recent demonstration.

Goddard is the home of NASA’s Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office, which was set up in 2009 to continue NASA’s 30-year legacy of satellite servicing and repair, which included missions to the Hubble Space Telescope. Its aims are to develop new ways to service satellites and to promote the development of a U.S. industry for conducting such operations.

To move toward these goals, NASA provided a research grant to West Virginia University, which in turn picked Johns Hopkins as a partner because of the school’s expertise in medical robotics. One task the team has worked on is the use of a remote-controlled robot to carefully cut the plastic tape that holds a satellite’s thermal insulation blanket in place. The tape must be cut and the blanket pulled back in order to expose the satellite’s refueling port. A long-distance test of this procedure, in which an operator at Johns Hopkins will guide a robot through a tape-cutting procedure in West Virginia, is slated to take place soon.

The task will be much more challenging when the target satellite is in orbit around the moon, for example. Because of the distance, there will be a significant delay between the time the operator signals the robot to move and the time these instructions are received and carried out. The research team is working on technology to help compensate for this delay.

At Johns Hopkins, the project has provided an exciting hands-on research opportunity for Jonathan Bohren, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering, and Tian Xia, a computer science doctoral student.

In the recent demonstration at Goddard, Bohren and Xia controlled the robot from a workstation at Johns Hopkins.

“The long-range goal is to be able to manipulate a space robot like this from any location to refuel satellites, for instance,” Bohren said. “A lot of satellites have the potential to have their lives extended if we can do that.”

Some satellites cost millions or even billions of dollars to construct and launch. If a cost-effective robotic rescue is possible, Xia said, then abandoning spent satellites would be wasteful. “It would be like driving a fancy car and then ditching it after it runs out of fuel,” he said. “We already have a lot of computer-assisted surgical technology here at Johns Hopkins. We could use some

of it to help fix and refuel satellites.”

The principal investigator of the satellite project at Johns Hopkins is Peter Kazanzides, an associate research professor in the Department of Computer Science in the Whiting School of Engineering. Kazanzides also directs the school’s Sensing, Manipulation and Real-Time Systems (SMARTS) lab. G

11/21/11

10:20 AM

Related websites Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center:

ssco.gsfc.nasa.gov/about.html

Sensing, Manipulation and Real-Time Systems (SMARTS) lab at Johns Hopkins:

smarts.lcsr.jhu.edu Computer Integrated Interventional Systems Laboratory at Johns Hopkins:

ciis.lcsr.jhu.edu Dynamical Systems and Control Laboratory at Johns Hopkins:

dscl.lcsr.jhu.edu

Page 1

An Army intelligence officer in Afghanistan A geologist in Chile A banker in Budapest A professor at Oxford A biotech business owner in Sweden A Park education takes you places.

Tours with Principals December 9

8:45 to 10:30 a.m.

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will kirk / homewoodphoto.jhu.edu

6 2011 6 THE THE GAZETTE GAZETTE •• December August 15,5,2011

Cyclone sweeps the series: With the power of rubber bands, Walt Mayfield (hands up) and Khari Douglas (foreground), both first-year engineering students from Texas, won the annual Mechanical Engineering freshman design competition on Nov. 30 with their entry, the Texas Cyclone. For the project, part of Freshman Experiences in Mechanical Engineering, students could use up to six rubber bands and two mousetraps to propel a device of their own design and construction up a six-foot cardboard pole—and have it remain there. “The hardest part was getting the friction right,” Mayfield says. Difficulties aside, Mayfield’s confidence in the duo’s design was made apparent when he pulled two glasses and a chilled bottle of sparkling cider from his backpack upon the announcement of the team’s win.

—Abby Lattes

Johns Hopkins Nurse Manager Academy goes global

T

he Institute for Johns Hopkins Nursing brought the tools and techniques of its Nurse Manager Academy to Japan for three days this fall.

“Currently, there is very little training for nurse managers in Japan; that is what makes this educational opportunity so timely,” said Lois Gould, manager of continuing nursing education for IJHN. “A nursing shortage exists in Japan just as in the U.S. The academy curriculum can teach managers the skills they need to help with nurse retention and engagement.” Gould was joined at the academy by representatives of FirstStar Healthcare

Co., a provider of consulting services and training programs to hospitals, clinics and other health care facilities.

Ten people attended this initial academy, where Japanese nursing instructors taught the IJHN curriculum. It was supplemented with a webinar led by Deborah Baker, director of Surgical Nursing at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, and Gina Szymanski, nurse manager in Oncology at JHH. The IJHN Nurse Manager Academy focuses on four major areas of knowledge and competency: exploring leadership, mastering management, communicating with impact and building effective teams.

Johns Hopkins Federal Credit Union has been meeting the needs of the Johns Hopkins community for 40 years.

Join Today!

410-534-4500 • jhfcu.org

See eligibility information below or contact us for details.

*APY = Annual Percentage Yield. Minimum to open is $500 and the maximum you can deposit is $1000. Limit one per member. Offer valid 10/1/11-12/31/11 and may be withdrawn at any time. Other restrictions may apply. There is a penalty for early withdrawal.

Your savings federally insured to at least $250,000 and backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government National Credit Union Administration, a U.S. Government Agency

Employees of JHU, JHH, JHMI, JHBMC, and most other Hopkins affiliates; current JHU students; and dues-paying members of the JHU Alumni Association are eligible for membership. For a full list, contact JHFCU or visit our website.

December 5, 2011 • THE GAZETTE

7

Mobile clinics, home visits don’t help asthmatic kids who need care B y E k at e r i n a P e s h e va

Johns Hopkins Medicine

A

new Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study of Baltimore City children with asthma shows that two programs designed to improve disease outcomes among those who may be affected the worst fall short of expectations.

The Breathmobile, a mobile clinic that brings preventive asthma care and education to low-income inner-city patients, did not improve asthma outcomes, nor did home visits by asthma educators, the study shows. The combination of the two had minimal and short-lived effects, the investigators report.

Researchers say that the findings, published online Nov. 21 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, underscore the critical need for better ways to reach and engage the most vulnerable pediatric asthma patients and eliminate the barriers that stand between these children and optimal asthma care.

Asthma is the most common chronic pediatric illness in the United States, affecting 6.5 million children. Past research has

shown that poor minority children traditionally experience worse disease and more frequent flare-ups because of delayed care, lack of a primary physician and more difficult access to specialists.

The researchers say they believe that each child treated by the mobile team benefited individually, but the cumulative, populationwide effects remained minimal because only a handful of those eligible for the services actually used them.

Despite free care, multiple locations and many reminders to schedule a visit, only half of the families whose children qualified for mobile clinic care used it, and only a fraction (20 percent) of those eligible to receive care showed up for their appointment.

“Parking the Breathmobile in the driveway down the street in and of itself is not enough to make a difference unless we get better at engaging these families and figure out what exactly is stopping them from using these services,” said senior investigator Kristin Riekert, an asthma researcher at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

Barriers to care, the investigators said, may include misconceptions about the need for nonurgent asthma care and busy work schedules that preclude daytime appoint-

ments. Previous research has found that some families underestimate disease severity and their children’s need for routine asthma prevention.

“Our study shows that removing structural barriers like access is important but insufficient,” said study lead investigator Michelle Eakin, of the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

The current study involved 321 lowincome children with asthma, ages 2 to 6, followed over one year. Patients were divided into four groups, those receiving Breathmobile clinic services, home-education visits, a combination of the two or neither.

Children in the clinic group underwent a physical exam, including a skin test for common asthma triggers such as pet dander and mouse and cockroach allergens. They also were given prescriptions for asthmacontroller medications to be taken regularly to prevent airway inflammation and avoid disease flare-ups. Families received the Breathmobile schedule for their neighborhood, as well as several reminders via phone and mail of upcoming visits. Children in the home-education group received a visit that provided the families with information on basic asthma care and tips on communicat-

ing with the child’s primary care physician.

The asthma educators also accompanied patients to an appointment with their pediatricians to ensure better communication.

Children who received both home visits and care at the Breathmobile had 7 percent more symptom-free days compared with those who got neither. In other words, they had 1.7 more days per month, on average, free of asthma symptoms. However, the increase was not sustained beyond six months, and the difference dissipated within a year.

The study found no notable differences between groups in numbers of emergency room visits, caregiver quality of life or use of rescue fast-acting medication to tame flareups, the latter an indicator of poorly controlled disease. The combined-care group experienced 83 percent fewer hospitalizations on average, but once again these differences disappeared within one year.

Co-investigators on the study are Cynthia Rand, Andrew Bilderback, Veni Kandasamy and Arlenet Butz, all of Johns Hopkins.

Mary Bollinger, of the University of Maryland, is a co-author.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Depressive symptoms linked to limited mobility in older blacks B y N ata l i e W o o d - W r i g h t

Bloomberg School of Public Health

A

new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and featured in a 2011 issue of the Journal of Gerontology has identified demographic and health-related characteristics that were related to mobility limitation.

Investigators found that African-American women who reported major depressive symptoms had nearly three times the odds of mobility limitation than those without major depressive symptoms. In addition, African-Americans who reported two or more medical conditions had higher odds of mobility impairment than those who reported fewer medical conditions. The new study has implications for members of the aging baby boomer population, in light of previous studies that have suggested that impaired mobility is a precursor to adverse events in older adults such as hospitalizations and nursing home admissions.

“The rapidly growing U.S. population 65 and older will bring with it greater numbers of minorities and people with mobility challenges,” said Roland Thorpe, an assistant scientist in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health Policy and Management. “Major depressive symptoms have not been previously identified as a factor of mobility difficulty, but these findings suggest that apathy may play a role in this relationship. It’s possible participants could do the measured activities, such as walking or climbing stairs, but lacked the motivation to do so. Strategies to preserve mobility among African-Americans must include efforts to reduce major depressive symptoms and proper health care to treat and control medical conditions such as diabetes, heart trouble, arthritis and stroke,” he said.

Researchers identified demographic and health-related characteristics that were related to mobility limitation in a sample of 602 African-Americans. Participants included men and women between the ages of 48 and 92 who reported being limited in climbing one flight of stairs or walking several blocks. Thorpe and colleagues conducted logistic regression to estimate the independent effect of each demographic and health-related characteristic on odds of

mobility limitation. They found that among African-Americans, co-morbid conditions were associated with mobility limitation, and women with lower incomes were most affected.

In a second study, published in a separate issue of the Journal of Gerontology, Thorpe led a team of researchers who examined the relationship between race and mobility to evaluate how socioeconomic status indicators, such as education and poverty level, affect this relationship. Using data from the Health, Aging and Body Composition Study, researchers examined black and white participants between the ages of 70 and 79 who self-reported capacity to walk a quarter-mile and climb 10 steps at a reason-

able pace. In initially well-functioning older adults, blacks had poorer mobility status based on walking speed compared to whites, a difference that was not explained by poverty, education, reading level or income adequacy. Over five years, black men experienced greater mobility limitation than white men.

“Higher rates of mobility loss observed in older blacks relative to older whites appear to be a function of poorer initial mobility status and existing health conditions, particularly for women,” Thorpe said. “Education may also play a role, especially for men.”

“Correlates of Mobility Limitation in African-Americans” was written by Thorpe, Olivio J. Clay, Sarah L. Szanton, Jason C.

Allaire and Keith E. Whitefield. The study was supported in part by the National Institute on Aging and the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities.

“Race, Socioeconomic Resources, and Late-Life Mobility and Decline: Findings From the Health, Aging and Body Composition Study” was written by Thorpe, Annemarie Koster, Stephen B. Kritchevsky, Anne B. Newman, Tamara Harris, Hilsa N. Ayonayon, Sara Perry, Ronica N. Rooks and Eleanor M. Simonsick. The study was supported in part by the National Institute on Aging, the Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health and the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities.

will kirk / homewoodphoto.jhu.edu

Study links mobility loss in older African-Americans to initial mobility status

M

Lighting of the Quads

embers of the Johns Hopkins community gathered outside the Milton S. Eisenhower Library on a cool, clear November night for the Lighting of the Quads, an annual tradition that kicks off the holiday season at Homewood. The Nov. 30 ceremony included holiday musical performances by the Pep Band, the Sirens and the AllNighters before President Ronald J. Daniels concluded the festivities by flipping a switch to light up Keyser Quad.

“This is a tradition that’s meant to lift our sights, if only for a few moments—we know you have more work to do—and remind us of the lightness and optimism of this time of year,” Daniels said. “As we flip the switch, we celebrate this community and the illuminated wonder of this place.”

The event, now in its seventh year, was co-sponsored by the Student Government Association, the Hopkins Organization for Programming and the Office of the Dean of Student Life.

—Kiel McLaughlin

8 2011 8 THE THE GAZETTE GAZETTE •• December August 15,5,2011

Weight Continued from page 1 with a joint appointment in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Appel, who recently presented his team’s findings at the American Heart Association’s annual Scientific Sessions in Orlando, Fla., identified several possible reasons why the interventions were effective: frequent counseling (by phone or in person), physician support and an interactive website with tools to track weight and provide regular feedback by email.

Patients were encouraged to sign in at least weekly to the program’s website to track their weight and to learn how to reduce it.

Patients who didn’t log in for more than a week received automated reminders. If they were out of touch for too long, they got phone calls from their coaches and letters from their doctors.

For the study, the researchers recruited 415 obese people with an average body mass index of 36.6 and an average weight of 229 pounds. The group was diverse but predominantly middle-aged women. They were

deliver this intervention. It removes some of the major logistical barriers.”

Obesity is an important and growing public health problem in the United States, where one in three adults is obese and thus at increased risk of mortality, especially from cardiovascular disease. Obesity by some estimates costs the United States more than $110 billion a year in health care and lost productivity costs.

As part of the new study, phone calls and in-person sessions were weekly for the first three months. For the next three months, the in-person program offered three monthly contacts (one group and two individual sessions) and then two monthly contacts for the rest of the two-year study. Those who were contacted by telephone were offered monthly calls from the end of the third month on.

Other Johns Hopkins researchers involved in the study are Jeanne M. Clark, HsinChieh “Jessica” Yeh, Nae-Yun Wang, Janelle W. Coughlin, Gail Daumit, Edgar Miller, Arlene Dalcin, Gary Noronha, Thomas Pozefsky, Jeanne Charleston, Jeffrey B. Reynolds, Nowella Durkin, Richard Rubin, Thomas A. Louis and Frederick L. Brancati.

The primary sponsor of the study was the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

Healthways Inc. developed the data collec-

randomly split into three groups: The control group received information about weight loss but did not receive counseling; another group received counseling over the phone by a coach; and a third group was offered in-person counseling. Those in the control group lost an average of less than two pounds over the course of two years. Those who had telephone sessions or in-person coaching lost a similar amount of weight: an average of 10 pounds over two years.

According to Appel, in-person programs are the standard, and such programs do lead to weight loss. But he was surprised to see that those who had only telephone contact with coaches did just as well as those who had in-person one-on-one and group sessions. Also, he said that as the study progressed, the in-person group opted to trade in the face-to-face sessions for the convenience of using the telephone.

“In most weight-loss studies, there is a lot of emphasis on frequent in-person counseling sessions, but from a logistical perspective, it’s a disaster,” Appel said. “Patients start off strong but then stop attending in-person sessions. That’s why I like the telephone program. It is convenient to individuals and can be done anywhere. You could be living in rural South Dakota, and we could D E C .

5

–

ogy seminar with Gary Fiskum, University of Maryland School of Medicine. Suite 2-200, 1830 Bldg.

EB

“Immersion of Manifolds Into Spheres,” an Analysis/PDE seminar with Shanyu Ji, University of Houston.

Sponsored by Mathematics. 300 Krieger. HW

Mon., Dec. 5, 4 p.m.

“Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Heart Failure: Novel Mechanisms and Potential Therapies,” a Molecular Microbiology and Immunology seminar with William Stanley, University of Maryland at Baltimore. Suite 2-200, 1830 Bldg. EB Mon., Dec. 5, 4 p.m.

“Transitions in Mental Health Care and Research From Settings of Acute Violence to Structural Violence in Nepal and Liberia,” a Mental Health faculty candidate seminar with Brandon Kohrt. B14B Hampton House. EB Tues., Dec. 6, 12:15 p.m.

“Reporting of Clinical Trials: A Random Walk Through the Sausage Factory,” a Center for Clinical Trials seminar with Deborah Zarin, National Library of Medicine.

W2030 SPH. EB

Wed., Dec. 7, 8:30 a.m.

“Sex, Drugs and Allostery: Dissecting Ligand-Control of Androgen and Estrogen Receptors,” a Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry student seminar with John Froehlig, SoM. 701 WBSB. EB Wed., Dec. 7, 9:30 a.m.

“Capturing Functional Motions of Membrane Transporters at Atomic Resolution,” a Physiology seminar with Emad Tajkhorshid, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. 203 Physiology. EB

Wed., Dec. 7, noon.

Wed., Dec. 7, 12:15 p.m.

Men-

tal Health Noon Seminar— “Community-Based Interventions in Mexico” with Fernando Wagner, Morgan State University. B14B Hampton House. EB

“‘Energy-Based’ Refinement of Protein Models: A Challenge for Structural Chemistry,” a Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry seminar with David Shortle, SoM. 701 WBSB. EB

Wed., Dec. 7, 1:30 p.m.

“The Impact of Lifetime Depressive Disorders on Adherence to Anti-Retroviral Therapy in a Rural HIV Clinic in Southern Uganda,” a Mental Health thesis defense seminar with Etheldreda Nakimuli-Mpungu. 845 Hampton House. EB

Wed., Dec. 7, 2 p.m.

Wed., Dec. 7, 4 p.m. “The Effects of Sulforaphane on Spinal Cord Injury,” a Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences thesis defense seminar with Andrea Benedict.

303 WBSB. EB

“Bayesian Models for Mining Public Health Information From Twitter,” a Biostatistics seminar with Mark Dredze, WSE. W2030 SPH. EB

Wed., Dec. 7, 4 p.m.

“Immune Defense of the Intestinal Epithelial Surface,” a Molecular Microbiology and Immunology/Infectious Diseases seminar with Lora Hooper, Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas. W1020 SPH. EB Thurs., Dec. 8, noon.

tions,” a Neuroscience research seminar with Shawn Hochman, Emory University. West Lecture Hall (ground floor), WBSB. EB Thurs., Dec. 8, 3 to 7 p.m., and Fri., Dec. 9, 8:30 a.m. to noon.

The Futures Seminar—Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, with guest panelists Lynne Huffer, Emory University; Ludger Viefhues-Bailey, Le Moyne College; and Dana Luciano, Georgetown University. 208 Gilman. HW Thurs., Dec. 8, 4 p.m. “Local and Genomewide Views of Transcription, Its Regulation and Its Interplay With Chromatin,” a Biology seminar with John Lis, Cornell Universty. 100 Mudd.

HW

“The Novel Endocrinology of the Bone,” a Center for Musculoskeletal Research seminar with Gerard Karsenty, Columbia University Medical Center. Sponsored by Orthopaedic Surgery Research.

5152 JHOC. EB

Thurs., Dec. 8, 4 p.m.

Lawrence Appel:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/gim/ faculty/appel.html Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research:

www.jhsph.edu/welchcenter More on the weight-loss trials:

www.powertrials.org

“Indoor Exposure of Particulate Matter and Acute Lower Respiratory Infections in Young Children in a Low-Income, Urban Bangladesh Community,” an Epidemiology thesis defense seminar with Emily Gurly. W2030 SPH. EB

Thurs., Dec. 8, 12:15 p.m. “A Glimpse of Malaria Situation and Challenges of Malaria Control in Myanmar,” a Global Disease Epidemiology and Control Program seminar with Ye Htut, World Health Organization. Sponsored

by International Health. W4030 SPH. EB

“Presynaptic Control of Body Sensa-

Fri., Dec. 9, 2 p.m. “Pharmacological Modulation of Critical Sig-

with Evergreen Museum bedecked with seasonal decorations, festive holiday fare and a festooned period sleigh. (See photo, p. 12.)

In addition, there will be a silent auction of one-ofa-kind hand-decorated art chairs by some of Baltimore’s best designers, architects and artisans; the opening of the fourth annual Johns Hopkins student photography show, Evergreen as Muse (see Exhibitions, p. 12); and after-hours viewing of the museum’s special exhibitions, Intimate Earth: The Art of Louise Wheatley and Zelda Fitzgerald: Choreography in Color. Holiday gifts will be available in the museum shop. $6 general admission; free for Evergreen members and JHU students. For information, call 410-516-0341 or e-mail evergreenmuseum@ jhu.edu. Evergreen Museum & Library.

naling Pathways of Sarcopenia,” an Institute of Genetic Medicine/ Human Genetics Graduate Program thesis defense seminar with Tyesha Burks. G-007 Ross. EB “Building Capacity for Tobacco Cessation in India and Indonesia,” an International Health seminar with Mark Nichter, University of Arizona, author of Global Health: Why Cultural Perceptions, Social Representations and Biopolitics Matter. E9519 SPH. EB

Fri., Dec. 9, 3 p.m.

Mon., Dec. 12, noon. “Parental Monitoring and Problem Behaviors,” a Mental Health thesis defense seminar with Ines Bustamante. 845 Hampton House. EB Mon.,

Dec.

12,

12:15

p.m.

“Developmental and Regenerative Biology of Cardiac Progenitor Cells,” a Carnegie Institution Embryology seminar with Sean Wu, Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

Rose Auditorium, 3520 San Martin Drive. HW “Combining Clinical Observation With Public Health Training to Design a Health Disparity Intervention: The CAPABLE Project,” a Hopkins Center for Disparities Solutions seminar with Sarah Szanton, SoN. Sponsored by Health Policy and Management. B14B Hampton House. EB Mon., Dec. 12, 3:30 p.m.

Fri., Dec. 9, 9 a.m.

“Environmental Enteropathy, Toilets, Handwashing, Geophagia and Child Health: An RCT in Zimbabwe,” a Global Disease Epidemiology and Control seminar with Jean Humphrey, SPH, and Andrew Prendergast, Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry. Sponsored

by International Health. W2015 SPH. EB

Thurs., Dec. 8, 1 p.m.

Related websites

1 2

Calendar Continued from page 12

tion and intervention websites, provided the lifestyle coaches for the intervention arm where services were provided over the phone, and provided unrestricted funds in support of the trial. Under an institutional consulting agreement between The Johns Hopkins University and Healthways Inc., the university is entitled to fees for consulting services. Those faculty members who participate in the consulting services receive a portion of the university fees. The terms of this agreement are managed by The Johns Hopkins University in accordance with its conflict-of-interest policies. G

S PE C I A L E V E N T S

‘A

Season

of

Celebration,’

Homewood Museum and Evergreen Museum & Library events.

HW

•

Fri., Dec. 9, 12:15 p.m.

•

Mon., Dec. 5, 5 to 7 p.m.

“Homewood by Candlelight,” annual event featuring the historic house decorated for the holidays with garlands and boxwood, its rooms set for entertaining and the sounds of live music in the reception hall; eggnog and cookies will be served in the wine cellar. $6 general admission, free for museum members and JHU students. Homewood Museum.

Thurs., Dec. 8, 6 to 8 p.m.

“An Ever Green Evening,”

Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine Research Day. EB

•

Wed., Dec. 7—

3 to 4 p.m.

4 to 6 p.m.

6 p.m. Awards and closing remarks. Turner Concourse.

•

Thurs.,

Poster sessions.

sions.

Dec.

Breakout ses-

8,

7

a.m.

Grand rounds with Timothy Brennan, University of Iowa, on the topic, “How Surgery Causes Pain.” Hurd Hall.

Sun., Dec. 11, 2 p.m. “A Celebration of the Life of Piero Weiss,” a tribute to the longtime Peabody faculty member. (See In Brief, p.

2.) Friedberg Hall. Peabody

S Y M PO S I A Thurs., Dec. 8, 3:30 to 5 p.m.

“‘Brown’ in Baltimore,” an Urban Health Institute symposium on how Brown v. Board of Education shaped Baltimore City school policies, with author Howell Baum, University of Maryland. A book signing follows the symposium.

W1214 SPH. EB

December 5, 2011 • THE GAZETTE

9

Found in Wyoming: New fossils of oldest American primate Earliest North American human predecessors may have been tree dwellers B y V a n e ss a M c M a i n s

Johns Hopkins Medicine

COURTESY OF THE ROSE LAB

J

ohns Hopkins researchers have identified the first ankle and toe bone fossils from the earliest North American true primate, which they say suggests that our earliest forerunners may have dwelled or moved primarily in trees, like modern-day lemurs and similar mammals.

Previous excavations have yielded pieces of the jaw and teeth of Teilhardina, a primate that first appeared just after the beginning of the Eocene Epoch, about 55.5 million years ago. In a report on their analysis of the fossils, published in the October issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, the Johns Hopkins team said it identified the latest bones when it went prospecting for evidence of the earliest Eocene mammals in the badlands of the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming, an area rich in fossils. The primate fossils were discovered in strata— bands of stratified earth—dating to the beginning of the Eocene Epoch.

“Living primates have nails on all or most of their toes and fingers, and they don’t occur in any other animal in exactly the same way,” said Ken Rose, a professor of anatomy in the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “The fossil toes we found have morphology [shape and form] indicating the presence of nails rather than claws, making our discovery the oldest evidence of nails found in primitive primates so far.”

The researchers noticed that the ankle bone fossils were elongated, which is a characteristic of present-day prosimian (non-

The flat arrow-shaped nail beds of the finger/toe-tip bones from ‘Teilhardina’ indicate that they had flat nails rather than claws.

monkey or nonape) primates that do a lot of jumping. The neck of the talus—one of the ankle bones—is relatively longer in Teilhardina than it is in present-day lemurs, which move about by leaping from tree to tree, Rose said. Unfortunately, the talus specimen was damaged, and a total measurement can’t be taken for exact comparisons. However, another ankle bone, the navicular, is also elongated, and the researchers were able to quantify its measurements.

Prior excavations in the same region revealed fossils of early relatives of horses, carnivores and rodents as well as Teilhardina. The researchers screened hundreds of pounds of sedimentary rock, reducing it to fine-grained concentrate, which was transported to the lab for examination under

School of Nursing researcher to compare parenting programs

By Meredith Lidard

School of Nursing

D

o current parenting programs meet the needs of Baltimore families?

Through a $3.2 million grant from the National Institute of Nursing Research, Johns Hopkins nurse researcher Deborah Gross will answer that question by comparing and measuring the impact on Baltimore families of two programs: Gross’ Chicago Parent Program and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, the current “gold standard” in parenting interventions.

The Chicago Parent Program, developed in 2002 by Gross and colleagues, focuses on a population overlooked in prior data-driven parenting programs: Latino and African-American families raising children in urban neighborhoods. The program emphasizes child-centered time, the importance of family routines and traditions, the value of praise and encouragement, rewards for reducing challenging behavior, the importance of setting clear limits and following through, the need to establish consequences, stress management and problem-solving skills for parents and the use of specific parenting strategies (for example, ignore, distract, time out) to help parents meet their child-rearing goals. The program uses group discussion and video vignettes of situations common to families raising young children, such as misbehavior in public places.

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, or PCIT, teaches similar skills to parents but uses an individual parent-child coaching model. Parents are taught specific skills to establish a nurturing and secure relationship with their child while increasing the

child’s pro-social behavior and decreasing negative behavior. This treatment focuses on two basic interactions: child-directed interaction, where parents are coached on how to engage their child in a play situation with the goal of strengthening the parent-child relationship, and parent-directed interaction, in which parents learn to use specific behavior-management techniques as they play with their child.

Gross’ work is the first study showing the comparison between the Chicago Parent Program and PCIT. Designed with input from clinicians at the Family Center Outpatient Mental Health Program at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, the study targets the additional challenges that Baltimore City families face, including economic stress, violence and sparse or nonexistent support systems.

Gross is the Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Professor in Mental Health and Psychiatric Nursing at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. Her co-principal investigator is Harolyn Belcher, director of research at the Family Center and an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The five-year study, launched in September, will run through July 2016. Gross says that the goal is to provide better care, with better outcomes, and at a lower cost.

“Right now, only a fraction of young children in need of mental health services are getting them. And of those who are getting services, many are not receiving the mosteffective treatments. This study will help us identify the most-cost-effective treatments for helping young children from low-income neighborhoods with serious behavior problems,” Gross said.

the microscope. Some early primate teeth specimens are known to be many times smaller than a grain of rice and appear only as specks to the human eye. Under the microscope, the researchers discovered not only teeth and jawbones from Teilhardina as before but also three fossilized toe bones and three ankle bones, which, Rose said, are the first found in North America. The bones were relatively free of attached sediment and appeared smooth and dark—due to the type of minerals accumulated during fossilization—against the gray, fine-grained sediment. Although toe bones are quite variable among species, these particular primate specimens are highly distinctive to a trained anatomist, Rose said.

Close examination of the tips of the toe bones revealed a widened, expanded arrowshaped region characteristic of flat finger- or toenails rather than claws. One of the bones was proportionally larger than the other two, and the research team proposed that this one was from the big toe or thumb.

Ancestors of Teilhardina originally had claws—hooked, narrow nail beds found on many land animals such as cats or birds. One of the distinguishing features of primates was that they evolved finger- and toenails with wide nail beds, like those found in humans and apes.

Analysis of the intact navicular ankle bone involved a calculation known as the navicular index that takes into account the proportion of the length to the width of the bone. Teilhardina has a relatively elongated navicular bone with an index of 165 units, similar to those of lemurs, which are less than 162 units. But the Teilhardina navicular bone is significantly shorter than those found in bush babies (between 300 and 500 units) and tarsiers (between 400 and 600 units). The modern lemurs are known leapers, while the bush babies and tarsiers are exceptional leapers that can jump up to six and a half feet. The numbers suggest that

Teilhardina moved actively through the trees and was capable of some leaping, Rose said.

The leaping capabilities make Teilhardina most likely to have dwelled in trees, which is an incredibly different habitat than the badlands of Wyoming today, which are dry and rocky with little vegetation, Rose said.

These creatures lived during a period of global warming, when subtropical climates and vegetation stretched all the way to the Arctic Circle, he said.

Rose said that Teilhardina was most likely similar in appearance to modern-day bush babies—small primates with big eyes, strong back legs and long tails. But he estimates that the Teilhardina was smaller, weighing only 3 or 4 ounces, about the size of the smallest living primates, mouse lemurs.

“Research on early primates gives us more evidence of our origins and our place in nature, with this particular study highlighting the oldest known member of our group from North America,” Rose said.

The study was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Yale University Department of Anthropology Williams Fund.

Additional authors on the paper are Rachel Dunn, then of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and now at the University of Missouri; Jonathan Bloch, of the Florida Museum of Natural History; Stephen Chester, of Yale University; and Doug Boyer, of Brooklyn College.

Related websites Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/fae Ken Rose:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/fae/ KDR.htm

Printing Services Finds Beauty in the Details On the Homewood campus is an incredible university resource with the capacity for customized high-volume copy work, short-run printing and everything in between.

Where Printing Services really shines, though, is in its attention to detail. Just ask. Its professionals know printing and duplicating, but even better, they know Johns Hopkins University and how important your work is.

Make Printing Services—a part of Marketing & Creative Services— your destination for copying and printing solutions.

To find out how Printing Services can help you with your next project, visit web.jhu.edu/printingservices or contact Ann Grattan at aeg@jhu.edu.

Printing Services Working for the Johns Hopkins community

MCSads.indd 5

11/11/11 1:19 PM

10 2011 10 THE THE GAZETTE GAZETTE •• December August 15,5,2011 H U M A N

R E S O U R C E S

Notices

Hot Jobs

Funding for Musculoskeletal Research Projects — The Johns Hopkins Center for

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

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

Homewood Office of Human Resources Wyman Park Building, Suite W600 410-516-7196 Critical postings within our Homewood Division include the following positions; applications are being accepted for these immediate opportunities. For detailed job descriptions and to apply, go to jobs.jhu.edu.

48770 49120 50365 50367 50398

B U L L E T I N

Librarian for East Asian Studies, Anthropology and Political Science Software Engineer, MSE Library Research Program Manager, School of Engineering Annual Giving Data Specialist, Annual Fund Office Administrative Coordinator, Benefits Administration Shared Services

Musculoskeletal Research announces the availability of funding for pilot and feasibility projects.

The CMR funds are available to encourage innovative research in pathogenic mechanisms, basic science and therapeutic approaches related to muscle and bone research.

Three grants of $30,000 (direct costs

Nearly one in four patients returns within 90 days, at a cost of $300 million a year

By Stephanie Desmon

N

Office of Human Resources 98 N. Broadway, Suite 300 410-955-2990 The School of Medicine currently has several RN and midlevel provider vacancies, all of which strive to deliver compassionate, state-of-the-art patient care. To see full job descriptions and to apply, go to jobs.jhu.edu.

47930 48359 48977 49453 48174 50103 50163

Nurse Practitioner Nurse Practitioner/Physician Assistant Nurse Practitioner/Physician Assistant Senior Research Nurse Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist Senior Research Nurse Clinical Nurse

Schools of Public Health and Nursing Office of Human Resources 2021 E. Monument St. 410-955-3006 The Bloomberg School of Public Health is seeking skilled applicants for several parttime and full-time positions. For detailed job descriptions and to apply, go to jobs.jhu .edu.

50426 Administrative Coordinator 50518 Senior Programmer Analyst 45746 Biostatistician 48603 Senior Biostatistician

Johns Hopkins University is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of gender, marital status, pregnancy, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, other legally protected characteristics or any other occupationally irrelevant criteria.

Woodcliffe Manor Apartments

S PA C I O U S

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

R O L A N D PA R K

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

410-243-1216

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

only) for a one-year pilot will be awarded, with eligibility to apply for a one-year competitive renewal.

Junior investigators without current or past NIH research support, or established investigators who would like to transition to a new career focus, are encouraged to apply.

The deadline for submission of the letter of intent for the 2012 grants is Jan. 4.

Contact Lynne Jones at 443-444-5906 or by email to ljones3@jhmi.edu with any questions about the program. For more information, go to www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ musculoskeletal_research.

Hospital readmissions after colon surgery common, preventable

Johns Hopkins Medicine

School of Medicine

B O A R D

early one-quarter of privately insured colon surgery patients are readmitted to the hospital within three months of discharge, at a cost of roughly $9,000 per readmission, according to Johns Hopkins researchers, who have identified a major area for quality improvement and cost reduction in health care.

The most common reason for returning to the hospital: complications from surgicalsite infections, which are likely preventable, they say.

Readmission rates, an increasingly popular yardstick by which hospitals are judged and penalized by insurers, are a major financial burden on the health care system.

Nationwide, these findings account for $300 million in readmission costs annually for colorectal surgery alone.

“Readmissions after surgery are common, and they burden the health care system with exorbitant costs,” said Martin A. Makary, an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the senior author of a report on the new study, published in the December issue of the journal Diseases of the Colon & Rectum. “While readmissions are sometimes unavoidable, many times they result from poor coordination of medical care. Everyone knows you can’t get readmissions down to zero, but at 23 percent, there’s a huge amount of room for improvement. There is no reason we can’t cut that rate in half.”

Said study leader Elizabeth Wick, an assistant professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins, “Hospital readmissions are costly to the patient, costly to the system, delay recovery and victimize some patients multiple times.”

Using data from BlueCross BlueShield plans in eight states, Makary, Wick and their colleagues reviewed records of 10,882 patients who underwent colorectal surgery between 2002 and 2008. They found that 11.4 percent of patients were readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge, and another 12 percent between days 31 and 90. Nearly 7 percent—725 patients—were readmitted two or more times within the first three months after discharge.

Colorectal surgery patients are at high risk for readmission because of the location and complexity of their operations. Many suffer from a postsurgical infection or from dehydration as the digestive system recovers from surgery. Stoma (ostomy) complications are also common. A stoma is sometimes needed to divert the intestinal tract outside the body.

Patients with a stoma are three times more likely to be readmitted within 30 days, and those with surgical-site infections are twice as likely, the researchers found. Patients in the study needed colorectal surgery primarily because of cancer or diverticulitis, a chronic

inflammation of the intestines. Nearly 19 percent of patients in the study contracted a surgical-site infection within 30 days of their operations.

Even a 5 percent reduction in surgical-site infections would have a significant impact on readmission rates and the associated costs, Wick says.

She notes that hospitals and surgeons are actively investigating ways to prevent surgical-site infections, and are testing various interventions.

At The Johns Hopkins Hospital, for example, nurses are independently reviewing discharge plans before patients leave, making follow-up appointments for them and reviewing medication lists, tasks shown to prevent some return visits to the emergency department for minor concerns. Makary says that some hospitals are beginning to have nurses follow up with patients by phone in the days after discharge. Those deemed at high risk for readmission receive home visits from a nurse. Both interventions are significantly less expensive than the cost of a new hospital stay.

He adds that many readmissions may be related to patients falling through the cracks. Sometimes they get lost in the process of setting follow-up appointments, don’t know what is considered to be a normal recovery, lack the right phone numbers to call for questions or are discharged with the wrong medications. He also suggests that some patients may be leaving the hospital too early and that “a little extra care on the front end” might stem costly readmissions.

Readmission rates after hospitalization for certain medical conditions have been targeted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as a factor in determining how much a hospital should be paid for treatment. Beginning in 2013, hospitals with higher than expected risk-adjusted 30-day readmission rates for patients with heart attacks, congestive heart failure and pneumonia will incur financial penalties.

Public reporting of readmission rates is also planned, and health care experts anticipate that patients with other diagnoses, including those undergoing colorectal surgery, will be incorporated into this pay-for-performance measure in the future.

“Hospital readmissions are being used as a surrogate measure for determining quality of care,” Wick said. “If care isn’t as good, patients end up back in the hospital. We need to make sure patients don’t have to come back.”

Other Johns Hopkins researchers who worked on the study are Andrew D. Shore, Kenzo Hirose, Andrew M. Ibrahim, Susan L. Gearhart, Jonathan Efron and Jonathan P. Weiner.

Related websites Elizabeth Wick:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/surgery/ faculty/Wick

Martin Makary:

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/surgery/ faculty/Makary

December 5, 2011 • THE GAZETTE

Classifieds

M A R K E T P L A C E

APARTMENTS/HOUSES FOR RENT

HOUSES FOR SALE

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

Catonsville, fully renov’d 3BR, 2BA RH, hdwd flrs throughout, new windows, new kitchen, new W/D, move-in ready and affordable. $149,900. 443-851-6514 or panfile@gmail.com.

Canton, 2BR, 2BA waterfront condo, W/D, 2 garage prkng spaces, avail Feb 2012, pics avail. $3,000/mo + utils. cpruva@yahoo .com.

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

Ellicott City, spacious 3BR, 2.5BA TH on corner, new windows, kitchen/dining area, fin’d walkout bsmt, deck/patio, Centennial high school zone. $1,875/mo. 410-979-9065 or rashmachaudhry@yahoo.com.

Fells Point/Canton, 2BR, 2BA RH, lg master BR w/walk-in closet, 2-tier rooftop deck, W/D, whirlpool tub, shed for storage, 1 blk to park, 30-min walk to JHMI, avail mid-Dec. $1,500/mo incl water. Kim, 410530-5201.

Gardenville, lg open-flr plan studio bsmt apt, W/D on same level, nr JHH/JHU/ Bayview. $675/mo + utils + sec dep. 410426-8045 or rent5214anthony@verizon.net (for pics).

Guilford (39th and Charles), modern 1BR condo, 820 sq ft, all amenities. $1,200/mo incl heat, AC, hot water, gas. 410-206-9632.

Homeland, 1BR, 1BA duplex on 26-acre estate, living rm, dining rm, kitchen, hdwd flrs, W/D, dw, prkng, pref mature prof’l. $975/mo incl utils. abbottja@hotmail.com.

Homeland, renov’d 2BR, 2BA in quiet bldg, new kitchen, dw, gas stove, CAC, W/D and storage in bsmt, balcony w/stream view, nr Belvedere shops, gated community has pool and exercise rm. $1,225/mo incl heat. 410243-0007 or tinyurl.com/c46vd4q (for pics).

Homewood (295 W 31st St), 2BR TH W/D, gas heat, deck, fenced yd, no pets/no smokers. $1,175/mo + utils. 443-994-8938 or yankybrit@hotmail.com.

Lutherville-Timonium, quiet, beautiful 3BR, 3BA house, hdwd flrs, well-designed kitchen, living rm, bsmt and family rm, garage, no pets/no smokers, 15-20 mins to Homewood or JHMI, avail Feb 1. $1,850/mo + utils. Sheng, 443-690-1483 or sheng.w.wu@ gmail.com.

Pikesville, recently renov’d 4BR, 1BA house, hdwd flrs, deck, porch, fenced yd, walking distance to subway. $1,200/mo.

410-370-2822 or lenabe52@gmail.com.

Roland Park, lg 1BR apt + dining rm, avail Dec 15. $1,100/mo incl heat, garage space, storage unit. mikesuse@comcast.net.

2907 St Paul St, newly renov’d 1BR apt, 1st flr, hdwd flrs, new cabinets, safe and quiet neighborhood. $900/mo incl heat, water. murilo_silvia@hotmail.com.

In the restaurant or in the boardroom let Chef Langermann handle the details. boston street | baltimore 410.534.3287 | langermanns.com

11

Fells Point (300 blk S Durham St), 3 stories, just renov’d, big yd, 3 blks to JHH. $175,000. Dorothy, 410-419-3902.

Lutherville, 5BR, 2.5BA single-family splitlevel, on 0.42 acre lot, 2,498 sq ft, fp, hdwd flrs, orig owner, great public school district, nice neighborhood, good for kids, conv location. Tony, 410-804-3653.

Rm in updated single house in nice, safe Towson area, free safe prkng, 2-min walk to MTA #3, 19 and 55, 20-min drive to Homewood campus or JHMI. $580/mo + utils. wjfj@hotmail.com.

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

’07 VW Passat, black, leather, DVD, Navi, CD, MP3, clean, up-to-date on maintenance, 115K mi (highway). $9,500. 804504-1202 or louis.alexjr@gmail.com.

Bookcases (5), coffee tables (2), kitchen table w/chairs, dresser, misc housewares. wallrat@gmail.com.

’05 Lexus SC430, black w/off-white leather interior, Navi, CD/cassette, garage-kept, clean, well maintained w/all records, 90K mi. $21,000/best offer. Monica, 410-371-4318.

SERVICES/ITEMS OFFERED OR WANTED

’89 Chevy 3/4 or 1-ton pickup truck, 4x4, rebuilt motor, new tires. $2,600. John, 443750-7750. ’06 Honda Accord sedan, silver w/gray cloth exterior, new tires and brakes, 71K mi. $13,000. Chris, 410-991-7910. ’04 Kia Spectra EX, black, new tires and brakes, passed Md state inspection, 93K mi. $4,700. calleman18@yahoo.com.

Washington Hill, 3BR, 2BA condo w/ contemporary layout, walk to JHH/shuttle, move-in ready. $130,000. 717-739-8233.

ITEMS FOR SALE

Washington Hill, nonsmoker bedspacer in contemporary condo, adjacent to Church Professional Bldg (98 N Broadway), walk to JHH/shuttle. $450/mo + utils. retzcare@ yahoo.com.

Share apt on W University Pkwy, across from Homewood Field, beginning spring 2012, name a reasonable price. amaechipa@ hotmail.com.

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

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

410-493-2435 or aprede1@yahoo.com.

F nonsmoker wanted for 1BR in 2BR W University Pkwy apt, share w/Hopkins alumna, AC, heat, hot water, 5 mins to campus, no pets, start January. $540/mo + 1/2 elec. gwxts5@gmail.com.

Share Charles Village apt w/JHU grad student, hdwd flrs, living rm, CAC/heat, your rm has a desk and chair, 2 lg windows and a patio, nr #3 bus stop, nr BMA/sculpture garden/Homewood campus, would like someone to stay 6 mos. $430/mo + sec dep (1 month’s rent). 646-344-0831.

Rm and BA avail in new TH, walking distance to JHMI, pref nonsmoker, no pets.

410-456-1708 or jessiezhang8@hotmail.com.

Rm avail in Hampden, share house w/33-yrold F, shared BA, W/D, hdwd flrs, pref nonsmoker, move in Feb 1 (flexible), 10-min walk to JHU. $600/mo + utils. angiemelliott@ gmail.com.

Prof’l/student can choose from 2 lg BRs (semi-furn’d, share master BA w/other renter) in single-family house in Dundalk or rent entire 2nd flr, long-term lease discount, owner has dogs; pics avail. $850/mo (individual BR) or $1,500/mo (entire flr). 410241-2421 or twochessies@comcast.net.

La-Z-Boy sofa and loveseat set, very comfortable, in very good cond, cushions incl’d, treated w/stain-resistant spray when new. $250. ar_thakar@yahoo.com.

CARS FOR SALE

Naples, FL, 2BR, 2BA condo in private 55+ community w/clubhouse and swimming pool, 26-ft dock, no bridges to Gulf, heated pool. $249,000. sticks@maine.edu.

ROOMMATES WANTED

Fender acoustic guitar. $200/best offers.

Chris, 443-326-7717.

Classical guitar, 1977 Calidad Suprema by Jose Oribe, beautifully crafted, warm sound, good projection, in excel cond, incls orig case. $7,500/best offer. 443-621-5650.

Motorcycle gear: Women’s leather jacket, lined, XS, $125; women’s Milwaukee boots, #7, $85; 12-volt battery charger, $45; all in excel cond. lisamwolf@comcast.net. iPod Touch (3rd generation), 32GB, minor scratches on case. $100. hylin402@gmail .com.

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

Apple iBooks (several), G3/G4, 12" to 14", wireless, OSX 10.4, in very good shape. $120 and up (negotiable). hopkinsbob@ yahoo.com (for pics/details).

Single ticket for Center Stage’s production of GLEAM, based on Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, 8pm on Fri, Jan 13, row K, seat 19. $40. Lori, 410-9177774 or niccole532@comcast.net.

Zoom 5241 cable modem w/power and coaxial cables, 2004 Gateway 450 laptop w/ high-res screen, currently running Ubuntu. d.e.richman@gmail.com.

Oak entertainment center, Wurlitzer Americana 1967 jukebox w/100+ 45 records,

Classical guitarist will play at your event or holiday party; plays other types of music also. 443-801-7592.

Mt Washington family needs nurturing, enthusiastic, creative, active person to care for our 2-mo-old daughter, starting January when mother returns to work, pref experience w/infants, nonsmoker, OK w/pets, own transportation a must. hvahvet@gmail.com.

Looking for babysitter for my 3-yr-old son, occasional wknds, person must have refs and experience w/toddlers, we live in Bolton Hill. 443-939-5322.

Schedule fun at your holiday parties w/ intuitive psychic Catori and astrologer/tarot card reader Eliza. Eliza, 410-967-3112.

Piano lessons by Peabody graduate student, reasonable rates. 425-890-1327.

Holiday auto detailing, email your requests. rquinlan2010@hotmail.com.

Searching for donations of video and computer games and Nintendo DS machines for pediatric psychiatric unit. Nurse Annie, 716-430-2768.

Free jewelry: look at quality jewelry, receive percentage of sales, invite friends from home or office. 646-441-1534.

Need help writing letters? Experienced writer will write/edit all types of letters to your specs. emceea@gmail.com.

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

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

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

Hauling/junk removal, next-day service, free phone estimate, 15% discount for all Hopkins. John, 443-682-4875.

Tutor for all subjects/levels; remedial and gifted; help w/college counseling, speech and essay writing, editing, proofreading. 410-3379877 (after 8pm) or i1__@hotmail.com.

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

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

• We cannot use Johns Hopkins business phone numbers or

e-mail addresses.

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

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

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

(Boxed ads in this section are paid advertisements.)

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

Live Near Your Work

The Live Near Your Work program provides Johns Hopkins employees with the opportunity to receive combined cash grants from the university, Baltimore City and the state of Maryland to be used for the purchase of homes within selected local neighborhoods.

HICKORY HEIGHTS WYMAN COURT Just Renovated! A lovely hilltop setting Grants are available to full-time, benefits-eligible employees of Johns Hopkins on Hickory Avenue Beech Ave. adj. to JHU! University, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Johns Hopkins Health Care, Johns Hopkins in Hampden!

Studios - $595 - $630 Community Physicians, Johns Hopkins Bayview and Johns Hopkins Home Care 2 BD units from $760 1 BD Apts. - $710-740 2 BD from $795 w/Balcony - $790!

Group. Other restrictions may apply.

Shown by appointment 410.764.7776 To find out more, contact the Office of Work, Life and Engagement at 443-997www.BrooksManagementCompany.com 7000 or go to web.jhu.edu/lnyw/index.html.

12 THE GAZETTE • December 5, 2011 D E C .

5

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Calendar

“Recollections of a Remarkable Archaeologist,” a SAIS African Studies discussion with Peter Lacovara of the Carlos Museum at Emory University. For more information, call 202-663-5676 or email itolber1@jhu.edu. Rome Bldg. Auditorium. SAIS E X H I B I T I O N S

will kirk / homewoodphoto.jhu.edu

Fri., Dec. 9, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Open house at Evergreen B y H e at h e r E g a n S ta l f o rt

Johns Hopkins University Museums

F

or those seeking a special holiday gift, 10 art chairs up for silent auction at Johns Hopkins University’s Evergreen Museum & Library offer a distinctive twist on functional furnishings. Continuing its tradition of celebrating the talents of local artists, artisans and designers, the Gilded Age house museum asked local talents to creatively decorate an IKEA Norvald side chair.

Proceeds from the auction will benefit the ongoing restoration of Evergreen’s ca. 1885 kitchen, a project spearheaded by the Evergreen Museum & Library Council, chaired by Lillian Kazazian.

The chairs were distributed to the likes of graphic design firm B. Creative Group, the furniture and decorative arts firm McLain Wiesand and architect Robert Bentley Adams, as well as individual artists.

For her vibrant red-and-gold Asian-inspired chair, artist Mary Plumer borrowed a foliage motif from an ancient Korean vase at the Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art. Art conservator and historian Edward Heimiller has updated the Baltimore painted chair with a polychrome, contemporary view of the Inner Harbor. And printmaker Claudia Bismark has harkened back to the spirit of 1960s flower power with a black-and-white homage to the daisy.

Evergreen is inviting the public to bid on the art

B L OO D D R I V E S

Tues., Dec. 6, and Wed., Dec. 7, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. JHU/

American Red Cross Blood Drive.

For more information, email johnshopkinsblooddrive@jhmi.edu or call 410-614-0913. Turner Concourse. EB

C O N F ERE N C E S COLLOQUIA

“Mechanisms and Energetics for Ionization of Liquid Water and Aqueous Nucleic Acids,” a Chemistry colloquium with Stephen Bradforth, University of Southern California. 233 Remsen. HW Tues., Dec. 6, 4:15 p.m.

“Kinetic Luminosity of Quasar Outflows and Its Implications to AGN Feedback: HST/COS Observations,” an STSci colloquium with Nahum Arav, Virginia Tech. Bahcall Auditorium, Muller Bldg. HW

Wed., Dec. 7, 3:30 p.m.

Fri., Dec. 9, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

“Open Ukraine in the Transatlantic Space (Day 2),” a SAIS Center for Transatlantic Relations conference with Victor Yushchenko, former president of Ukraine; Paula Dobriansky, former U.S. undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs; and Richard Morningstar, special U.S. envoy for Eurasian energy. Co-sponsored by the Eastern Institute’s Economic Forum. For more information, go to www.eventbrite.com/ event/2535563940/mcivte. Kenney Auditorium, Nitze Bldg. SAIS

G RA N D ROU N D S

Wed., Dec. 7, noon to 1:30 p.m. “Public Health and the

chairs from 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 8, at its “Ever Green Evening” holiday open house. The silent auction will continue online after the event, through Sunday, Dec. 11, via the museum’s website, museums.jhu.edu.

The Dec. 8 open house also marks the opening of the fourth annual Evergreen as Muse student artists’ books exhibition, the culmination of a semester-long undergraduate course taught through the Homewood Art Workshops and the Program in Museums and Society.

After-hours viewing of the museum’s other special exhibitions and festively decked-out period rooms, holiday shopping in the museum shop and a mulled cider reception with seasonal savories and sweets—courtesy of Charles Levine Caterers, Classic Catering, Chef’s Expressions, Linwoods and Watson Caterers, and Zeffert & Gold Catering—will make for a truly memorable evening. $6; free for Evergreen members and JHU students.

On Saturday, Dec. 11, Evergreen director Jim Abbott will lead a workshop on the art and craft of card making in the Victorian era. Participants will use an array of colorful papers, ribbons, fabrics and printed illustrations to create their unique holiday and gift cards. The workshop is open to all ages, and materials will be provided. $6; free for members. Advance registration is requested by calling 410-516-0341.

For silent auction and event details, go to www .museums.jhu.edu or call 410-516-0341.

Thurs., Dec. 8, 3 p.m. “From Space Colonies to Nanobots: Visioneers and Their Technological Futures,” a History of Science, Medicine and Technology colloquium with Patrick McCray, University of California, Santa Barbara. 300 Gilman. HW

Evergreen as Muse, opening of the fourth annual Evergreen as Muse group exhibition of student-made artists’ books. Part of the undergraduate course The Artist in the Museum: Making Books, a collaboration of the Homewood Art Workshops and the Program in Museums and Society. Sponsored by University Museums. The exhibit continues through Jan. 29.

Free with museum admission and on view as part of the regular museum guided tour. For more information, go to www.museums .jhu.edu. Evergreen Museum & Library.

DISCUSSIONS/ TALKS Mon., Dec. 5, 6:30 p.m. “Future

Directions in Education: What Will Work Best for Students,” a panel discussion with Michael Yudin, U.S. Department of Education; Michal Petrilli, Thomas Fordham Foundation; and author Deborah Meier. There will be an opportunity for audience questions and comments. Part of the School of Education’s Shaping the Future series. Shriver Hall Auditorium. HW

Thurs., Dec. 8, 7 p.m. “The Sociology of Nanuen Ggnomsuda,” an Office of Student Life discussion with the hosts of the South Korean talk show. Cosponsored by Peace21.org. To RSVP, email hahn.kim81@gmail .com. Kenney Auditorium, Nitze Bldg. SAIS Fri., Dec. 9, 6:30 to 9 p.m.

Alcohol Tax Campaign: How Marylanders Beat the Alcohol Lobby and Why It Matters,” Public Health Practice grand rounds with David Jernigan and Vincent DeMarco, both of SPH. Sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Public Health Training Center and the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. (A live webcast will be available at www.jhsph.edu/ maphtc.) W1214 SPH. EB

I N F OR M A T I O N SESSIONS Tues., Dec. 6, 1 to 3 p.m., and Fri., Dec. 9, 10 a.m. to noon.

Open hours for the Blackboard Grade Center, an opportunity for full-time KSAS and WSE faculty and TAs with grading responsibilities to ask questions about weighting grades, uploading or downloading to and from Excel and exporting final grades from Blackboard to ISIS. Sponsored by the Center for Educational Resources. For information, call 410-516-7181 or email cerweb@jhu.edu. Garrett Room, MSE Library. HW MUSIC Music at Peabody. $15 general admission, $10 for senior citizens and $5 for students (except where noted). Peabody

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The Peabody Orchestra performs music by Haydn and Holst, with the women members of the Peabody Singers. Friedberg Hall.

Wed., Dec. 7, 8 p.m.

Thurs., Dec. 8, 7:30 p.m.

The Peabody Improvisation and Multimedia Ensemble performs. East Hall.

The Peabody Jazz Orchestra celebrates the 70th birth year of vocalist Jay Clayton. East Hall.

Fri., Dec. 9, 7:30 p.m.

Sat., Dec. 10, 3:30 p.m.

The Preparatory Young Artists Orchestra and the Preparatory String Ensemble perform in concert. Free. Griswold Hall.

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Sat., Dec. 10, 7 p.m. The Peabody Youth Orchestra performs music by Verdi, Bizet and Tchaikovsky. Free.

Friedberg Hall.

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Sat., Dec. 10, 7:30 p.m.

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Sun., Dec. 11, 7:30 p.m.

The Peabody Latin Jazz Ensemble performs. East Hall.

The Peabody Brass Ensemble performs. Free. Griswold Hall.

REA D I N G S / B OO K T A L K S Mon., Dec. 5, 2:30 p.m. Poetry reading by Tracy K. Smith, Princeton University. Sponsored

by STSci. Bahcall Auditorium, Muller Bldg. HW Wed., Dec. 7, 6 to 8 p.m.

David Satter, of SAIS, will discuss his new book, It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway, with Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation, and blogger Robert Amsterdam, Amsterdam & Peroff. Reception follows at 8 p.m. Sponsored by the SAIS Foreign Policy Institute. For more information or to RSVP, call 202663-5772 or email ckunkel@jhu. edu. Kenney Auditorium, Nitze Bldg. SAIS S E M I N AR S

“Inhibition of a-Synuclein Aggregation as a Strategy for the Treatment of Neurodegenerative Diseases,” a Biochemistry and Molecular Biology seminar with Gregory Petsko, Brandeis University.

W1020 SPH. EB

Mon., Dec. 5, noon.

“CD8+T Cell Effector Function in Hu­­ mans,” an Immunology Training Program seminar with Michael Betts, University of Pennsylvania.

Tilghman Auditorium, Turner Concourse. EB

Mon., Dec. 5, 1 p.m.

“Making America Healthier for All: What Each of Us Can Do,” a Hopkins Center for Disparities Solutions seminar with David Williams, Harvard School of Public Health. Sponsored by Health Policy and Management. W1214 SPH. EB

Mon., Dec. 5, 3:30 p.m.

Mon., Dec. 5, 4 p.m. “Novel Mitochondrial Mechanisms of Cytoprotection,” a Molecular Microbiology and Immunol-

Continued on page 8

(Events are free and Calendar

open to the public Key

except where indicated.)

APL BRB CRB CSEB

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

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

and Sciences NEB New Engineering Building PCTB Preclinical Teaching Building SAIS School of Advanced

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