august 3, 2009 - the gazette

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our 38th year

Covering Homewood, East Baltimore, Peabody,

SAIS, APL and other campuses throughout the

Baltimore-Washington area and abroad, since 1971.

august 3, 2009 the newspaper of the Johns hopkins university Volume 38 No. 41

Job Opportunities

Notices

Classifieds

oBItuary

Raymond Westbrook, authority

on ancient Near Eastern legal

traditions, has died, page 5

stItchINg stem cells

BME students’ surgical thread

could enhance healing of

orthopedic injuries, page 3

I N B r I e f

Dolley Madison at Homewood; golfing for

Hopkins Children’s; national security program

c a l e N D a r

Unified Voices of JH presents ‘Little Shop of

Horrors’; community volunteer opportunities2 12

Two nations, one pastime C O M M U N I T Y

Enrollment spikes at HomewoodB y G r e G r i e n z i

The Gazette

In face of overwhelming economic uncertainty, it seems the university may have underestimated its appeal.

Despite projections to the contrary, the incoming Homewood undergradu-ate class of 2013 will be significantly

larger than expected, a reality that has prompted university officials to respond in a variety of ways to meet student needs. Johns Hopkins offi-cials, like colleagues at many other elite private colleges and universities across the

nation, expected a lower than normal yield (the percentage of accepted stu-dents who enroll) because of the econ-omy. A recent survey by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities reported that a third of U.S. private colleges expected freshman enrollment to decline more than 5 per-cent in the 2009–2010 school year. Admissions officials at Johns Hop-kins thought that the university would face stiffer than usual competition from relatively cheaper state schools and from universities with large endowments that could offer more financial aid. In prepa-ration for the drop in yield, the univer-sity, like many of its peers, admitted a higher number of students. The yield, surprisingly, increased. “I continue to be floored by this,” said John Latting, dean of undergraduate admissions. “The extraordinary thing was that the yield even went up for the group who didn’t apply for financial aid. Despite the economy—which, for many, meant losses in income, savings and/or assets—they still felt an education at Johns Hop-kins is well worth the investment.” Specifically, the class shot up to 1,350—115 students past the target mark of 1,235. (Last year’s entering class had 1,238 students.) The increased enrollment has created

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Johns Hopkins’ baseball field is meeting ground for Sister Cities teams

B y G r e G r i e n z i

The Gazette

Johns Hopkins hosted a baseball clash of East vs. West on July 28 as a youth team from Kawasaki, Japan, faced off against a 15-and-under All-Star team from Baltimore.

the baseball field on the Jhu homewood campus brought together teams from Baltimore and Kawasaki, Japan. here, Baltimore coach steve Duncan, of Jhu, exchanges greetings with hiroyuki suzuki of the Kawasaki Board of education.

Johns Hopkins hits 100 mark in Recovery Act grants R E S E A R C H

Continued on page 9

B y L i s a D e n i k e

Homewood

The Johns Hopkins University has to date been awarded 100 National Institutes of Health research grants

through the American Recovery and Revi-talization Act of 2009, also known as the federal stimulus package. These grants, totaling more than $21

million, will finance investigations ranging from computer-assisted orthopedic surgery to the role that certain proteins play in the development of muscular dystrophy to effec-tive treatments of patients with sickle cell disease and beyond. The National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation received $12.4 billion as part of the stimulus act to award research grants between now and Sep-tember 2010. Johns Hopkins scientists are

expected to submit nearly 1,500 proposals for stimulus-funded projects, according to Scott Zeger, interim provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. “Johns Hopkins scientists are distin-guished by their creativity and entrepre-neurial spirit as evidenced by their response to this ARRA opportunity,” Zeger said. “This is a chance to make discoveries that

The friendly matchup, held on the Homewood campus, was part of a two-game series to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Sister Cities program between Balti-more and its Japanese counterpart. The first game was played on July 26 at the Gilman School. Twenty years ago, for the 10th anniver-sary of the Sister Cities pairing, Baltimore students traveled to Kawasaki for a two-week program that also involved exhibition baseball games. Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon threw out the first pitch on the warm, humid day that brought out a sizable crowd of thunderstick-

banging supporters. Before the game, the players exchanged gifts and posed for a group photo that included the mayor and a contingent from Kawasaki. Steve Duncan, assistant coach for the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays baseball team, managed the Baltimore squad, which included players from various city youth league teams and Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks programs. Despite the strong show of support for the hometown team, Kawasaki won the game 17-1 to sweep both ends of the series.

2 THE GAZETTE • August 3, 2009

I N B R I E F

e D i t o r Lois Perschetz

W r i t e r Greg Rienzi

Pr o D u c t i o n Lynna Bright

co P y eD i t o r Ann Stiller

Ph o t o G r a P h y Homewood Imaging and Photographic Services

aD v e rt i s i n G The Gazelle Group

Bu s i n e s s Dianne MacLeod

ci r c u L at i o n Lynette Floyd

We B m a s t e r Tim Windsor

Applied Physics Laboratory Michael Buckley, Paulette CampbellBloomberg School of Public Health Tim Parsons, Natalie Wood-WrightCarey Business School Andrew BlumbergHomewoodLisa De Nike, Amy Lunday, Dennis O’Shea,Tracey A. Reeves, Phil SneidermanJohns Hopkins MedicineChristen Brownlee, Audrey Huang,John Lazarou, David March, Katerina Pesheva, Vanessa Wasta,Maryalice YakutchikPeabody Institute Richard SeldenSAIS Felisa Neuringer KlubesSchool of Education James Campbell, Theresa NortonSchool of Nursing Kelly Brooks-StaubUniversity Libraries and Museums Brian Shields, Heather Egan Stalfort

c o n t r i B u t i n G W r i t e r s

The Gazette is published weekly Sept-ember through May and biweekly June through August for the Johns Hopkins University community by the Office of Government, Community and Public Affairs, Suite 540, 901 S. Bond St., Baltimore, MD 21231, in cooperation with all university divisions. Subscrip-tions 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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Johns Hopkins receives grant to increase nurse graduates

The Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing will receive more than $984,000 over the next five years as

a recipient of a Who Will Care? grant, given by the Maryland Hospital Association. Pamela Jeffries, associate dean for aca-demic affairs, and Linda Rose, associate professor, will use the grant to develop and pilot test an alternative model for clinical teaching and integrating into the program emerging technologies such as simulation, online courses and electronic student portfo-lios to enhance and track clinical skills and experiences. This will allow more flexibility to people wishing to pursue nursing degrees who may not be able to attend class full time and/or in person. Hospitals, insurance companies, businesses and private citizens donated $15.5 million to fund Who Will Care? grants, aimed to increase the number of nursing graduates in response to the potential nursing gap that will exist once the economic downturn ends. In all, 17 schools received initial funding. “Without this initiative, we will face a shortage of 10,000 nurses in Maryland,” MHA president and CEO Carmela Coyle said. “These grants will begin the increase so we won’t face a huge chasm when almost half of the nursing workforce retires just as the baby boomer generation’s health needs reach their peak.”

Martin’s Giant raises more than $280,000 for Hopkins Children’s

Martin’s Giant Golf Tournament, Our Kids Golf Outing, played on golf courses throughout central Pennsyl-

vania on July 20, raised more than $280,000 for Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. The tourney sponsored by the food market chain is the largest one-day golf tournament in the country to benefit Children’s Miracle Network, of which Hopkins Children’s is a member beneficiary. Hopkins was among several children’s hospitals to benefit from the tournament’s tally of more than $1.8 million. The event hosted more than 1,700 golfers playing on 12 different courses.

First lady Dolley Madison comes to Homewood

The country’s fourth first lady—and the first to hold the moniker as a real position—is the subject of a new

documentary that recently filmed historical reenactments at Homewood Museum. The program, which depicts the life of Dolley Madison in her roles of cultured and elegant hostess, and sharp political adviser to her husband, President James Madison, is scheduled to air in early 2010 as part of PBS’ American Experience history series. All but two of Homewood’s rooms were used as a backdrop for White House scenes,

including famous incidents that occurred there when the British invaded Washing-ton, D.C., during the War of 1812. The producers and filmmakers, TPT National Productions and Middlemarch Films, said they found Homewood to be an ideal loca-tion as so much of its furniture and fixtures are of the Madisons’ era, and the museum’s director-curator, Catherine Rogers Arthur, provided vital details on re-creating an authentic period interior. Following their day at Homewood, the cast and crew moved to locations in and around Richmond, and the Madisons’ Vir-ginia estate, Montpelier, before finishing filming and editing at a studio in New York.

SAIS hosts program on national security, intelligence

The Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at SAIS this month hosted for the Office of the Director of

National Intelligence a two-week course for 40 doctoral and master’s degree candidates and recent college graduates from around the country. The session was designed to give the students an in-depth exposure to national security issues and experts, and to increase their interest in the intelligence community as a career. The participants were selected from 704 applicants and included a police cadet and military veterans, as well as Rhodes and Marshall scholars. The group possessed extensive language capabilities, including in Urdu, Japanese, Russian and Farsi. The focus of the course, directed by John McLaughlin and Tom Keaney of the Merrill Center, was national security and intel-ligence, with sessions broken down into four areas: Introduction to the Intelligence Field, Intelligence Collection and Analysis, Key International Issues Facing the United States and Intelligence’s Interaction with Policy and Military Operations. Taught by SAIS faculty, outside speakers and intelligence community representatives, the sessions included classes in the Rome Building and visits to four intelligence agen-cies, Capitol Hill and the Antietam Battle-field.

SoN offers new scholarships for disadvantaged, underrepresented

The Johns Hopkins School of Nurs-ing is now offering six new scholar-ships for students from disadvantaged

backgrounds or underrepresented groups in nursing who enroll in the accelerated bac-calaureate program. Funded through a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the goal of the New Careers in Nursing Scholarship Pro-gram is to both increase student enrollment in accelerated programs and enhance the diversity of the student body. Students may use their scholarship funds to pay tuition, academic fees and living expenses.

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August 3, 2009 • THE GAZETTE 3

the project team, clockwise from top left: hayley osen, matt rubashkin, Kristie charoen, steven su, stephanie D’souza, frank Qin, David attarzadeh, lawrence Wei, raghav Badrinath and avik som.

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Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering students have demonstrated a practical way to embed a patient’s own adult stem cells in the surgical thread that doctors use to repair serious orthopedic

injuries such as ruptured tendons. The goal, the students said, is to enhance healing and reduce the likelihood of re-injury without changing the surgical procedure itself. The project team—10 undergraduates sponsored by Bioactive Surgical, a Maryland medical technology company—won first place in this year’s Design Day competition conducted by the university’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. In collaboration with orthopedic physicians, the students have begun testing the stem cell–bearing sutures in an animal model, paving the way for possible human trials within about five years. The students say they believe that this technology has great promise for the treat-ment of debilitating tendon, ligament and muscle injuries, often sports-related, that affect thousands of young and middle-aged adults annually. “Using sutures that carry stem cells to the injury site would not change the way surgeons repair the injury,” said Matt Rubashkin, the student team leader, “but we believe the stem cells will significantly speed up and improve the heal-ing process. And because the stem cells will come from the patient, there should be no rejection problems.” The corporate sponsor, Bioactive Surgi-cal, developed the patent-pending concept for a new way to embed stem cells in sutures during the surgical process. The company then enlisted the student team to assemble and test a prototype to demonstrate that the concept was sound. The undergraduates performed this work during the required yearlong Design Team course. The team located a machine that could weave surgical thread in a way that would ensure the most effective delivery and long-

term survival of the stem cells. The stu-dents conducted some aspects of the ani-mal testing, although orthopedic physicians performed the surgical procedures. The students also prepared grant applications, seeking funding for additional testing of the technology, in collaboration with Bioactive Surgical. “The students did a phenomenal job,” said Richard H. Spedden, chief executive officer of Bioactive Surgical. As envisioned by the company and the students, a doctor would withdraw bone mar-row containing stem cells from a patient’s hip while the patient was under anesthesia. The stem cells would then be embedded in the novel suture through a quick and easily performed proprietary process. The surgeon would then stitch together the ruptured Achilles tendon or other injury in the conventional manner but using the sutures embedded with stem cells. At the site of the injury, the stem cells

Students embed stem cells in sutures to enhance healing

are expected to reduce inflammation and release growth factor proteins that speed up the healing, enhancing the prospects for a full recovery and reducing the likelihood of re-injury. The team’s preliminary experi-ments in an animal model have yielded promising results, indicating that the stem cells attached to the sutures can survive the surgical process and retain the ability to turn into replacement tissue, such as tendon or cartilage. If similar results occur in future human test-ing, many patients may benefit. Researching the business opportunity, the students found that about 46,000 people in the United States undergo Achilles tendon repair sur-gery every year, with a mean age between 30 and 50 years old. The operation and subsequent therapy costs are about $40,000 per case, the students said. “After surgery, the recovery process can take up to a year. In about 20 percent of the cases, the surgery fails and another operation is needed,” said

Rubashkin, who will begin his senior year at Johns Hopkins in the fall. “Anything we can do to speed up the healing and lower the failure rate and the additional medical costs could make a big difference.” Lew Schon, a leading Baltimore foot and ankle surgeon and one of the inventors of the technology, said, “These students have demonstrated an amazing amount of initiative and leadership in all aspects of this project, including actually produc-ing the suture and designing the ensuing mechanical, cell-based and animal trials.” Schon, who also is an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery in the Johns Hop-kins School of Medicine, added that “the students exceeded all expectations. They have probably cut at least a year off of the development time of this technology, and they are definitely advancing the science in this emerging area.” The biomedical engineering students say that some of their grant applications are aimed at studying the use of stem cell–bearing sutures for other orthopedic applica-tions, such as rotator cuff repairs. Future uses in cardiology and obstetrics are also being considered. Along with Rubashkin, members of the stem cell suture design team were David Attarzadeh, Raghav Badrinath, Kristie Charoen, Stephanie D’Souza, Hayley Osen, Frank Qin, Avik Som, Steven Su and Law-rence Wei. A provisional patent has been filed cov-ering potential improvements to the stem cell–bearing suture technology by the mem-bers of the Johns Hopkins student design team.

Related Web sitesJohns hopkins Department of Biomedical engineering: www.bme.jhu.edu

Bioactive surgical: www.bioactivesurgical.com

B y a m y L u n D a y

Homewood

Seven doctoral students and alum-ni from the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Peabody and SAIS will have the opportunity to study abroad during the 2009–

2010 academic year through the prestigious Fulbright Program. Established in 1946 under legisla-tion introduced by Sen. J. William Ful-bright of Arkansas, the Fulbright Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Approximately 7,500 new grants are awarded annually, funded by an appro-priation by Congress along with support from participating governments and host institutions, corporations and foundations in foreign countries. Approximately 294,000 “Fulbrighters”—111,000 from the United States and 183,000 from other countries—have participated in the program since its inception. The 2009–2010 Johns Hopkins scholars come from a wide range of disciplines and have destinations spanning the globe. Anne Flannery will travel to Austria to complete her doctorate in Germanic language and literature from the Krieger School. Her research focuses on the figure of the walker in modern Vienna and how walk-ing becomes a way of reading a city through its architecture, signs, traffic, pedestrian walkways and districts. “My analysis will

combine historical, cultural and discursive methodologies that will focus on the mod-ernization of Vienna and how the process of modernizing the city affects and influences the development of the anti-flaneur [stroller] within 20th-century Viennese literature,” she wrote in her application. “I will examine literary texts by Arthur Schnitzler, Thomas Bernhard and W.G. Sebald as well as Michel de Certeau’s Rhetoric of Walking.” Zane Forshee, a doctoral candidate in classical guitar at Peabody, will travel to Spain to study with Ignacio Rodes, profes-sor of guitar at the Oscar Espla Conserva-torio in Alicante. “My goal as a Fulbright scholar,” he wrote, “is to study, perform and record works written for the guitar by four of the most influential Spanish composers of the 20th century: Joaquin Turina, Fed-erico Moreno Torroba, Joaquin Rodrigo and Vicente Ascencio.” Brett Frankel will travel to Budapest to study Hungarian mathematics pedagogy at the undergraduate level. “My observations at the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics program will culminate in my own sample lesson plans and exercises and a mainstream journal article that outlines successful Hun-garian teaching practices,” he wrote. “I will also enroll in graduate courses taught by leading Hungarian professors.” Frankel earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Krieger School in May. Shannon Koh will travel to South Korea as a Fulbright English teaching assistant at the secondary level. “My experiences as a tutor and mentor, as well as living abroad and my

Seven receive Fulbrights to study abroad in 2009–2010visits to South Korea, have helped prepare me for the ETA in Korea,” Koh wrote. “I would like to teach the ‘big picture’ behind English, and help students gain the confidence to use the language. I also hope to incorporate part of my life into theirs through running. I want to portray a positive image of the U.S., as well as learn more about Korea and its people.” Koh earned her bachelor’s degree in neurosci-ence from the Krieger School in May. A member of the Krieger School’s class of 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in political science, Moktar Sheikh-Salah will travel to Egypt to study the efforts by the government and local people to combat the food crisis in that country. He will conduct independent research at the Social Research Center at the American University in Cairo, pursue course work at that university and interview farmers, grocers and food vendors. “My research will provide scholars and policy-makers informa-tion that is overshadowed by regional crises,” he wrote in his proposal. “It will address a basic problem that, if left unchanged, could have a negative impact on the stability of Egypt and the region. It will also provide the government of Egypt with insight on the progress of the efforts by the government and the local population. After the completion of this research, I look to return to the United States and pursue a career in international development or in the Foreign Service.” In pursuit of her doctorate at the Uni-versity of Toronto, Flora Ward, who earned her bachelor’s degree in art history from the Krieger School in 2003, will use her Fulbright to travel to Spain to work on a

project titled “Constructing the Camara Santa: Architecture, History and Authority in Medieval Oviedo.” It focuses, she wrote, on “its complex, ideologically laden history of reconstruction and interpretation. “I read its structure, decoration and recon-struction in a historiographic context that attends to both medieval and modern trans-formations of the site,” she continued. “I argue that these transformations fundamen-tally frame our understanding of the Camara Santa, early medieval Spanish history and Spanish national identity as a whole.” Anna Marzullo, who earned her master’s degree in European studies and international economics from SAIS in 2008, will travel to Spain to study Muslim immigrant integra-tion in Spanish society. Students and alumni interested in the U.S. Students Program of Fulbright should contact their school’s Fulbright adviser: for SAIS, Lisa Kahn; Medicine, Nursing and Public Health, Cassie Klein; and all others, John Bader. More information on the Fulbright is available at http://fulbright.state.gov/Fulbright.

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Continued from page 1

Enrollment

a number of logistical challenges. To deal with these issues, Paula Burger, dean of undergraduate education, convened a com-mittee that included representatives of vari-ous academic departments and the offices of Student Affairs, Undergraduate Admissions, Academic Advising, Residential Life, and Housing and Dining Services. To date, the group has met in its entirety four times, and members have been in constant contact with each other. One of the most pressing issues: Where will all the students sleep? The university immediately went in search of extra housing options. First, it fully leased the Hopkins Inn, a bed-and-breakfast lodg-ing located on St. Paul Street, an action that created spaces for 62 students. The hotel has since been outfitted with a seminar room, student lounge, fitness room and common kitchen. “The Hopkins Inn will also have appropri-ate security personnel and Residential Life staff, so it will in essence become another residence hall,” Burger said. The university also reopened Rogers House, located on Greenway, a student apartment building that had been closed for

renovations. Burger said the space can house 20 or more students. With still more spaces needed, letters were recently sent out to juniors and seniors who live in campus housing, telling them that if they wished to move off campus that the university would assist them with hous-ing deposits and vouchers for furniture. In addition, Burger said that some triple rooms will have to be created in existing housing facilities, an option that will pro-vide a cost savings for those who wish to participate. On the academic front, the university examined the roster of freshman-friendly courses to look for possible pressure points. To avoid a registration crunch, new sections of many popular gateway courses, such as Introductory Chemistry I and Calculus I, were added, as were 10 small seminar classes. “We wanted to ensure that the students have the academic experience that they expect in coming here,” Burger said. “We’ve had very fine cooperation from all the depart-ments, and I can say with conviction that we have addressed this issue comprehensively. In fact, registration has gone particularly well, the smoothest it has in a while.” The committee is also looking into dining hall use but doesn’t expect any increased congestion, especially once students settle into classes. Burger said that the only action taken so far has been to add extra card-swipe machines to some dining facilities.

Burger said that the large freshman class will not likely have a discernible impact on move-in days, scheduled for Aug. 28 and 29. Latting said that the large incoming class could have implications down the road, too, but for now the university is focused on the upcoming two semesters. “We need to con-sider housing capacity next year for when they become sophomores, but we have time to plan for that,” he said. As to whether having all the extra stu-dents is a good or bad thing, Latting cer-tainly falls on the positive side. “These are remarkable, outstanding stu-dents, and we are very glad to have them,” Latting said. “It says a lot that so many, even those who need to make some sacrifices, want to come here for the great education offered.” As to why the yield was so high, Latting said that the prevailing stereotype of Johns Hopkins as an intense place where students work hard likely had a positive impact. “These students have big plans for life after college and realize what a competitive employment landscape is out there. This is all part of the new narrative for how people are looking at college now. The economy is pulling us in this direction,” he said. “It’s no longer a matter of where to spend the

so-called best four years of your life. Many students want to get serious. This is work-ing for us. So is our brand and reputation, the substance of the experience that you get here.” But is Johns Hopkins ready to accommo-date all these scholars? “I feel really good about where we are,” Burger said. “We have done a lot of plan-ning. We want all our efforts to be seamless to both the students and their parents.” Homewood is not the only JHU location where undergraduate enrollment is up: The incoming Peabody class is the second-largest in 20 years. Peabody will have 300 students coming in the fall. The typical class size is about 250, with the largest ever at 303, according to James Dobson, Peabody regis-trar. Dobson said that the class’s larger-than-expected size is likely due to Peabody’s being more aggressive in awarding financial aid. He said that the school is pleased about the larger class and doesn’t expect it to cause any strain, but to accommodate the extra stu-dents it has added sections of certain classes. At the School of Nursing, the incoming class size falls within the projected range. Officials anticipate approximately 120 stu-dents. g

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Westbrook

Raymond Westbrook, 62, authority on ancient Near East lawB y t h e G a z e t t e s t a f f

Raymond Westbrook, the W.W. Spence Professor in Semitic Languages in the Department of Near Eastern Studies

in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, died on July 23 in London following a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 62. Westbrook, who came to Johns Hopkins in 1987, was considered the leading author-ity on ancient Near Eastern legal traditions, and he made important contributions to the study of early Greek and Roman law. He conceived and edited the monumental two-volume History of Ancient Near Eastern Law (2003), writing himself more than 200 of its 1,200 pages, and making significant contributions to many more. Westbrook was uniquely equipped for his field of study, according to his colleague Jerrold Cooper, the W.W. Spence Professor Emeritus of Semitic Languages. Raised in Southend-on-Sea, England, Westbrook read law at Oxford and earned a master’s degree in law at Hebrew Uni-versity, Jerusalem. He next did graduate work in Assyriology at Yale, but his studies there were cut short by the untimely death of his dissertation adviser, J.J. Finkelstein. Called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1976, he practiced briefly and taught at the Inns of Court School of Law for two years. Next, making good use of his mastery of five European languages, he spent four years as head of the English Translation Section of the European Community’s supreme audit

body in Luxembourg, all the while working on his dissertation with the special encour-agement of Claus Wilcke at the University of Munich. Yale awarded him a doctorate in 1982, and from 1983 to 1987 he was a lecturer at the Hebrew University, with joint appointments in the Faculty of Law and Department of Biblical Studies.. “Ray’s initial training in the law gave him privileged insight into ancient legal sys-tems,” Cooper said. “Understanding that his circumstances were rather special, he sought to bring legal historians and political scien-tists together with scholars of the ancient

Near East to better comprehend ancient legal and diplomatic documents.” The three international conferences that Westbrook organized to these ends were published as Amarna Diplomacy: The Begin-nings of International Relations, with Raymond Cohen, in 2000; Security for Debt in Ancient Near Eastern Law, with Egyptologist Richard Jasnow, a colleague at Johns Hopkins, in 2001; and Isaiah’s Vision of Peace in Biblical and Modern International Relations: Swords into Plowshares, also with Cohen, in 2008. As a scholar of Greek and Roman law as well as ancient Near Eastern law, he was also interested in bringing classicists together with ancient Near Eastern specialists, as he did in the conference published as Women and Prop-erty in Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean Societies, with Deborah Lyons, in 2005. At Johns Hopkins, Westbrook taught courses in Akkadian, Sumerian and Hittite, especially legal and diplomatic texts, and taught courses in Roman law for the Clas-sics Department. His popular undergraduate courses, Law in the Ancient World and The Origins of Diplomacy, were part of the minor in ancient law that he originated and directed. Westbrook also was a past director of the Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Jew-ish Studies Program. In 2000, undergradu-ates honored him with the Johns Hopkins Student Council Excellence in Teaching Award. “Ray was a marvelous colleague, always eager to cast a critical but encouraging eye over drafts of articles, or to brainstorm on

topics of mutual interest,” Cooper said. “He spent much time mentoring junior faculty and bringing needy graduate students up to speed in, say, Greek or German.” Known by friends and colleagues as a bril-liant conversationalist and a terrific story-teller, Westbrook also wrote children’s stories whose hero, Rabbi Binyamin, with the help of Akbar the mouse, would defeat evil wher-ever it surfaced. Initially written for his sons, the tales drew on themes from the Bible and Jewish tradition. Westbrook didn’t publish the stories, but they enjoyed wide circulation among his friends and family. While fighting cancer, Westbrook found solace in his scholarship, Cooper said. “For Ray, the best antidote to the pain and discomfort of the illness and treatments that dominated the last years of his life was to keep working,” Cooper said. “We who witnessed his electrifying Iwry Lecture, ‘Justice in Genesis,’ in the fall of 2007 were astonished at his ability to rise to the occa-sion, actually well above it, in such dire condition. He continued teaching, lecturing and writing almost to the end.” Westbrook’s final monograph, Everyday Law in Biblical Israel: An Introduction (with B. Wells) is in press. A two-volume collec-tion of his articles, Law From the Tigris to the Tiber, will appear later this year, in conjunc-tion with a session dedicated to his work at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting in New Orleans. He is survived by his wife, Henie, and his sons, Harry and Hasdai.

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More than 20 percent of new teach-ers in Baltimore City for the com-ing school year are from Teach for

America, and many will earn their educa-tion degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Education. The 2009–2010 TFA class is double the previous year’s total and repre-sents Baltimore City School CEO Andres Alonso’s commitment to the program. Teach for America has partnered with Johns Hopkins for the past 10 years. School of Education faculty members coordinate support with the TFA Baltimore office to help new teachers become effective class-room instructors and be prepared for the urban school environment. According to Alonso, middle and high school students

taught by TFA participants outperformed students in the rest of the district even though the teachers worked in some of the most challenging schools. “I think of Teach for America as almost an instrument of reform in the district, in that the mission and commitment of the partners is very much in line with the reforms we are putting in place,” Alonso said. TFA draws from a national corps of recent college graduates who commit to at least two years of teaching, during which they must complete a master’s degree in educa-tion. For this year, the organization experi-enced a 45 percent increase in applications, which included those from 5 percent of Johns Hopkins seniors.

School of Education partners with Teach for America


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B y J o h n B L a c k

Faculty, Staff and Retiree Programs

The annual Johns Hopkins Picnic closes out the summer with an evening of family fun for staff, faculty, students and retirees and their families and friends

from 5 to 7 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 28, on the grounds of Johns Hopkins at Eastern. Games, entertainment and all-you-can-eat picnic fare are included in the $5 price. Admission is free for children 3 and under. Tickets are limited and are being sold only in advance. A list of sellers and purchasing policies can be found at www.jhu.edu/fsrp by

clicking on the Hopkins Picnic link. Ticket sales begin today, Aug. 3, and conclude on Friday, Aug. 21, or until sold out, whichever comes first. There are a number of activities with which faculty and staff are needed to assist; admission for volunteers is free, and each of them will receive a complimentary picnic shirt. To volunteer, contact Jackie Coe in the Office of Faculty, Staff and Retiree Programs at [email protected] or call 410-516-6060. Free parking is available on the Eller-slie Lot, and extra shuttle service will be provided. For more information about the picnic, go to the Web site listed above or call FSRP at 410-516-6060.

Save the date: Johns Hopkins Picnic ticket sales begin today

Picnic-goers at last year’s event.

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B y c h r i s t e n B r o Wn L e e

Johns Hopkins Medicine

A study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Utah State universities suggests that a particularly close rela-

tionship with caregivers may give people with Alzheimer’s disease a marked edge over those without one in retaining mind and brain function over time. The beneficial effect of emotional intimacy that the researchers saw among participants was on par with some drugs used to treat the disease. A report on the study, believed to be the first to show that the patient-caregiver rela-tionship may directly influence progression of Alzheimer’s disease, is published in the September Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences and currently available online. “We’ve shown that the benefits of hav-ing a close caregiver, especially a spouse, may mean the difference between someone with AD staying at home or going to a nursing facility,” said Constantine Lyketsos, the Elizabeth Plank Althouse Professor in Alzheimer’s Disease Research and director of the Johns Hopkins Memory and Alzheimer’s Treatment Center. Lyketsos cautions that it remains unclear how or why this benefit was evident in the study since the results may be due to milder forms of Alzheimer’s disease among those who reported close relationships. “A close relationship might prompt caregivers to deliver more attentive treatment, but it might be the other way around, with a milder illness helping caregivers stay close,” Lyketsos said. “Our next study is designed to detangle what’s going on.” Researchers have long been interested in the relationships between caregivers and Alzheimer’s disease patients, with many stud-ies focusing on the well-being of caregivers. However, little was known about the converse relationship: how caregivers affect the well-being of people with Alzheimer’s disease. To find out, Lyketsos and colleagues at Johns Hopkins, Utah State, University of Washington, Duke and Boston Uni-versity examined 167 pairs of caregivers and Alzheimer’s patients. The pairs were recruited from the Cache County (Utah) Dementia Progression Study, which has tracked hundreds of people with Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia since 1994. All the study participants live in Cache County, whose residents topped the longevity scale in the 1990 United States census. Starting in 2002, the researchers met with patient-caregiver pairs in their homes every six months for periods of up to four years. At each meeting, the patients underwent a battery of tests to assess physical, cognitive, functional and behavioral health. The researchers also interviewed the caregivers—spouses, adult children or adult children-in-law—about the

care-giving environment and gave them a survey to assess how close their relationships were with the patients. The survey asked caregivers to rate their level of agreement or disagreement with six statements such as “My relationship with the care recipient is close,” “The care recipient makes me feel like a spe-cial person” and “The care recipient and I can always discuss things together.” At the outset of the study, all patients scored similarly on cognitive and func-tional tests. However, as time progressed, the researchers found marked differences between patients whose caregivers had scored their relationships on the surveys as close or more distant. Patients whose

caregivers felt particularly close to them retained more of their cognitive function over the course of the study, losing less than half as many points on average by the end of the study on a common cognitive test called the Mini-Mental State Exam compared to patients with more distant caregivers. Patients with close caregivers also scored better on a functional test called the Clini-cal Dementia Rating, remaining signifi-cantly closer to baseline over time compared to those with more distant caregivers. The “closeness effect” was heightened for pairs in which the caregiver was a spouse, as opposed to an adult child or in-law. Patients with close spouses declined the slowest over-all, with scores on the Mini-Mental State Exam showing changes over time similar to patients participating in recent clinical trials for FDA-approved Alzheimer’s drugs called acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. “We’ve shown that the benefits of having a close caregiver, especially a spouse, may be substantial. The difference in cognitive and functional decline over time between close and not-as-close pairs can mean the differ-ence between staying at home or going to a nursing facility,” Lyketsos said. The study was funded by grants from the National Institute on Aging, one of the National Institutes of Health.

Close caregiver relationship may slow Alzheimer’s decline

Related Web sitesconstantine lyketsos: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ Psychiatry/Faculty/L/Lyketsos .html

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ Psychiatry/bayview/index.html

Psychiatry and Behavioral sciences at Johns hopkins: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ Psychiatry

cache county study on memory health and aging: www.usu.edu/epicenter/htm/ studies/memorystudy


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B y t i m P a r s o n s

School of Public Health

Researchers at the Johns Hop-kins Malaria Research Institute have for the first time produced

a malarial protein in the proper con-formation and quantity to generate a significant immune response in mice and nonhuman primates for use in a potential transmission-blocking vaccine. Antibodies induced by Pfs48/45 pro-tein vaccine effectively blocked the sex-ual development of the malaria-causing parasite, Plasmodium, as it grows within the mosquito. Sexual development is a critical step in the parasite’s life cycle and necessary for continued transmission of malaria from mosquitoes to humans. The study is published in the July 22 edition of the journal PLoS ONE. “Development of a successful transmis-sion-blocking vaccine is an essential step in efforts to control the global spread of malaria. In our study, we demonstrate the relative ease of expression and induction of potent transmission-blocking antibod-ies in mice and nonhuman primates. This approach provides a compelling ratio-nale and basis for testing a transmission-blocking vaccine in humans,” said Nirb-hay Kumar, senior author of the study and a professor in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecu-lar Microbiology and Immunology. For the study, the research team expressed full-length Pfs48/45 in E. coli bacteria to produce the vaccine. Previ-

ous attempts to fully express the protein had not been successful. The vaccine was first given to mice in the laboratory. The vaccine was also tested in nonhuman primates (Olive baboons) in Kenya with similar results. According to the study, a single-dose vaccine provided a 93 percent transmission-blocking immune response, reaching greater than 98 percent after a booster given several months later. “This is an exciting beginning to what might become an important tool in the arsenal for malaria control and progres-sive elimination of malaria transmis-sion,” Kumar said. There is no animal reservoir for human malaria, and in that regard it is possible to gradually reduce malaria transmission to a point of almost eradication. However, Kumar cautioned that more research is needed to achieve that goal. For one, similar research efforts are needed to reduce transmission of Plasmodium vivax, another major human malaria parasite. Malaria affects more than 500 million people worldwide and is estimated to each year kill more than 1 million people, most of whom are children living in Africa. In addition to Kumar, authors of the study are Debabani Roy Chowdhury, a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hop-kins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Evelina Angov, of the U.S. Military Malaria Vaccine Program; and Thomas Kariuki, of the Institute of Primate Research in Nairobi, Kenya. The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute.

Vaccine blocks transmission of malaria in lab experiments

B y D a v i D m a r c h


Johns Hopkins experts in applied physics, computer engineering, infec-tious diseases, emergency medicine, microbiology, pathology and surgery have unveiled a 7-foot-tall, $10,000

shower cubicle–shaped device that auto-matically sanitizes in 30 minutes all sorts of hard-to-clean equipment in a highly trafficked hospital Emergency Department. The novel device can sanitize and disinfect equipment of all shapes and sizes, from intravenous line poles and blood pressure cuffs, to pulse oximeter wires and electro-cardiogram wires, to computer keyboards and cell phones. The invention, dubbed SUDS for “self-cleaning unit for the decontamination of small instruments,” has been shown to ini-tially disinfect noncritical equipment better than manual cleaning, the team reports in the Annals of Surgical Innovation and Research online July 27. Surgeon Bolanle Asiyanbola, the study’s senior author, says that the four-year SUDS project was sparked by the rapid rise in use of expensive disposable items, a trend linked to efforts to prevent bacterial infections among patients in hospitals. Drawing on her experience in the operat-ing room, where many batches of surgical clamps, retractors and scalpels have been sterilized, decontaminated and safely reused for decades, Asiyanbola put together a team to end what she calls the “wasteful and unnecessary” practice of wiping down a lot of heavily used items with disinfectants and applying a lot of elbow grease. “If we can safely reuse equipment in the operat-ing room, then we can do it elsewhere in the hospital for noncritical equipment,” she said. In the study, the Johns Hopkins team showed that SUDS was able to disinfect some 90 pieces of used emergency-room equipment, placing as many as 15 items in the device and “fogging” the equipment with an aerosolized, commercially available disinfectant chemical, or biocide, called Sporicidin. None of the electronic circuitry appeared to be damaged by the decontami-nation process. Instruments tested were of the type that comes in direct contact with a patient’s skin, the body’s key barrier to infec-tion. Repeated swabbing and lab culture testing of each decontaminated instrument showed that all items remained free of so-called gram-positive bacteria for two full days after cleaning, even after the equipment was returned to the Emergency Department and reused. On the bacteria-free list were such potentially dangerous superbugs as methicil-lin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, known as

MRSA, and vancomycin-resistant Entero-coccus, or VRE. By contrast, testing of an equal num-ber of similar items that were manually scrubbed down with a disinfectant solution called Airex showed that 25 percent of the devices had bacterial growth after two days, including growth of potentially dangerous gram-positive bacteria, such as MRSA and VRE, as well as gram-negative type bacte-ria, most notably Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter baumannii, plus some types of fungi. “Our study results with the prototype offer strong evidence that more can be done to disinfect noncritical equipment through automated decontamination processes in heavily trafficked areas of the hospital,” said Asiyanbola, an assistant professor at the School of Medicine. “We believe this SUDS device has the potential to further protect our patients and staff from hospital infec-tions and save health care dollars by making it possible to clean and reuse more kinds of hospital equipment.” The Johns Hopkins inventors, who have patent applications pending, say that more studies must be done to determine if SUDS is effective for other hospital superbugs, notably Clostridium difficile. Asiyanbola worked closely with Karen Carroll, director of Microbiology and a professor of pathology and medicine, and Allison Agwu, an assistant professor in Pediatric Infectious Diseases, to assemble the team to help test the prototype. Fund-ing was provided by a grant from the Department of Surgery at The Johns Hop-kins Hospital. In addition to Asiyanbola, Carroll and Agwu, Johns Hopkins University research-ers involved in this study were Chidi Obasi, Richard Rothman and Tracy Ross, all of the School of Medicine; Wale Akinpelu and Roger Hammons, of the Applied Phys-ics Laboratory; Clyde Clarke and Ralph Etienne-Cummings, of the Whiting School of Engineering; and Peter Hill and Stella Babola, of the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Related Web sitesBolanle asiyanbola: www.hopkinsbayview.org/surgery/ faculty/bola.html

Karen carroll: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ microbiology/faculty/carroll.html ‘annals of surgical Innovation and research’: www.asir-journal.com

New sanitizer reduces infections, cuts back on costly disposables

The Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing has received a $1.6 mil-lion Nurse Support Program II grant

to increase the number of master’s-prepared nurses qualified to fill faculty vacancies in Maryland schools of nursing. According to a report by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, nurs-ing schools in the United States turned away nearly 50,000 qualified applicants in 2008, due in part to an insufficient number of faculty. The grant proposal, submitted by Kath-leen White, Anne Belcher, Sharon Olsen and Pam Jeffries, outlines a plan to offer the Health Systems Management and Clini-cal Nurse Specialist tracks of the master’s program using online and distance learning

technology. By affording more students the opportunity to pursue graduate degrees in a flexible and convenient manner, they said, the likelihood of preparing nurses qualified to fill faculty vacancies will increase. Previous partners in the first NSP II grant submitted by the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing—The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Mercy Health Services, St. Agnes Health Care, Greater Baltimore Medi-cal Center and Howard County General Hospital—wrote letters of support for this proposal. The grant is funded by the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission and the Maryland Higher Education Com-mission.

Nursing receives four-year grantto train faculty for Md. schools


MORE FUNDING TODAY. MORE MIRACLES TOMORROW.A message from patients and the physicians and researchers of America’s medical schools, teaching hospitals, universities, research companies and organizations.

ResearchMeansHope.org

Tell your members of Congress that you support signifi cant, annual increases in medical research funding.Go to ResearchMeansHope.org to send your message today.

And today its promise has never been greater.

But despite the considerable progress that’s been made in new treatments and therapies, too many Americans still suffer

from heart disease, asthma, depression, Parkinson’s and other incurable diseases. We can change this – through signifi cant,

annual increases in federal funding for medical research. It’s one of the best investments we can make in our future.

Medical research is the beginning of hope. gg pf Medical research is the beginning of hope.gg pf ssM d tledical research is the beginning of hope.

10x15.25_Claire_NEWS.indd 1 6/3/09 11:39:32 AM




Approximately one in six public health workers said they would not report to work during a pandem-

ic flu emergency regardless of its severity, according to a survey led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are a significant improve-ment over a 2005 study, conducted by the same research team, in which more than 40 percent of public health employees said they were unlikely to report to work dur-ing a pandemic emergency. The new study suggests ways for improving the response of the public health workforce. The results are published in the July 24 edition of the journal PLoS ONE. “Employee response is a critical com-

ponent of preparedness planning, yet it is often overlooked. Our study is an attempt to understand the underlying factors that deter-mine an employee’s willingness to respond in an emergency,” said Daniel Barnett, lead author of the study and assistant profes-sor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Bloomberg School. “Overall, 16 percent of the workers surveyed said they would not report regardless of the severity of the outbreak.” The online survey was conducted among 1,835 public health workers in Minnesota, Ohio and West Virginia from November 2006 to December 2007. The survey analysis was based on the Extended Parallel Process Model, which postulates that willingness to follow instructions in an emergency is based on an individual’s perception of a threat’s validity and belief that the actions taken can be feasibly accomplished and will have a positive impact on the threat.

1 in 6 public health workers unlikely to respond in pandemic According to the survey, public health workers who were “concerned” about the threat posed by a pandemic, and who were also “confident” that they could fulfill their response roles and that their roles would have a meaningful impact on the situa-tion, were 31 times more likely to respond to work in an emergency than those who perceived the threat low and had low levels of confidence. Workers whose perception of the threat was “low” but who strongly believed in the efficacy of their job were 18 times more likely to say they would respond compared to those in the “low threat/low efficacy” group. “We found belief in the importance of one’s work was strongly associated with a willingness to report to work in an emergency. Our results could help pre-paredness planners to identify workforce needs and develop strategies for improv-ing worker response,” said co-author Ran

Balicer, senior lecturer in the Epidemiology Department at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and joint editor of the Israeli Ministry of Health Pandemic Preparedness Plan. Jonathan Links, professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences and director of the Public Health Preparedness Programs, said, “This study is important in that it both documents the problem and points the way toward specific interventions—those that increase both concern and confidence—to increase willingness to respond.” Additional Johns Hopkins–affiliated authors of the study are Carol B. Thompson, J. Douglas Storey, Saad B. Omer, Natalie L. Semon and Links. The research was funded by CDC’s Cen-ters for Public Health Preparedness program and by CDC’s Preparedness and Emergency Response Research Centers program.


Stimulus

change our understanding of the world in which we live, as well as to stimulate the economies of Baltimore and Maryland.” Se-Jin Lee, a professor of molecular biol-ogy and genetics at the School of Medicine, is among the faculty who received grant money. In an effort to develop new strate-gies to prevent muscle loss caused by mus-cular dystrophy and other muscle-wasting diseases, Lee will use the funds to continue studying a protein called myostatin, which controls muscle growth. During periods of muscle growth, myostatin is kept inactive by binding to special “inhibitor” proteins. Lee’s ARRA funding will allow him to investigate the relationship between myostatin and special enzymes related to these inhibitor proteins in mice with muscular dystrophy. Lisa Feigenson, assistant professor of psy-chological and brain sciences in the Zan-vyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, received recovery funds to investigate how babies and young children who haven’t yet learned how to count understand numbers. Previous research indicates that people have an “approximate number sense”—an ability, without counting, to estimate the number of objects, sounds or events in a scene. Feigen-son and her team hope that understanding

this system will eventually help people with dyscalculia, a learning disability involving innate difficulty in learning or comprehend-ing mathematics and number-based tasks. Sabra Klein, an assistant professor in the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, is using a mouse model to examine how men and women differ in their response to the influenza virus. Klein and her team believe that this research will establish sex-specific mechanisms that may be important both for understanding the varying effectiveness of influenza vaccine and for pandemic preparedness. Earlier this year, Johns Hopkins held a job fair seeking candidates for the specialized science and administrative jobs that were expected to open up thanks to extra research funding provided by the stimulus act. As a result of the job fair, Johns Hopkins has begun to hire people for these positions. “Johns Hopkins is the largest private employer in Baltimore and, with its expen-ditures in research, teaching, patient care, construction and other areas, has helped to insulate the region against the worst of the recession,” Zeger said. “We are working very hard to take full advantage of the opportuni-ties afforded by the stimulus to advance health and to help promote economic recovery.” Johns Hopkins has been the leading U.S. academic institution in total research and development spending for 29 years in a row. g

B y J i m c a m P B e L L

School of Education

Federal grants of more than $11.4 million were recently awarded to two divisions within Johns Hop-

kins’ School of Education. The Division of Public Safety Leadership will use its funding to develop training programs for the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, while the Department of Special Education will focus on teacher recruit-ment. The Division of Public Safety Leader-ship received $9.8 million to support lead-ership development initiatives in Home-land Security’s Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The divi-sion will take the lead in engaging other School of Education departments and university entities in supporting ICE. An additional award of $300,000 from ICE will support the establishment at Johns Hopkins of the Center for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In September, the new center, along with the School of Education’s Center for Technology in Education, will begin offering a national seven-course executive development ICE Fellows Program. The Division of Public Safety Leader-

ship was also awarded an $830,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Manage-ment Agency and the International Asso-ciation of Fire Chiefs to conduct research, develop an assessment tool and design curricula to enhance regional coordina-tion among law enforcement agencies responding to critical incidents and cata-strophic events. The division will partner with the Center for Technology in Educa-tion and the Major Cities Chiefs of Police Association on this project. In addition, the United States Depart-ment of Education awarded a grant of $475,000 to fund the Johns Hopkins University Secondary Support Initia-tive within the School of Education’s Department of Special Education. The goal of this project is to improve the recruitment, preparation and support of highly qualified teachers of secondary students with high-incidence disabilities. This effort will aid special education teacher preparation programs in meeting the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. Laura Boughton, project director, said, “We’re very excited about this opportunity to bring together general and special education teachers to focus on evidence-based inclusive program-ming that will enhance the quality of instruction of our graduate students and ultimately the students they teach.”

School of Education receives $11.4 million in federal funding



Comprehensive regulation of gun sell-ers appears to reduce the trafficking of guns to criminals, according to a

study led by researchers at the Johns Hop-kins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Preventing the diversion of guns to crimi-nals is important because 85 percent of guns recovered by police were recovered from criminal suspects who were not the original purchasers of the guns, according to prior research from the Bureau of Alco-hol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF. The Johns Hopkins study is the first to gather and incorporate measures of the enforcement of gun sale laws into a study of the effectiveness of those laws. It is available online in the Journal of Urban Health and in the July print edition. “In the U.S., few states have a com-prehensive system to keep firearms sell-ers accountable,” said the study’s lead author, Daniel Webster, co-director of the Bloomberg School’s Center for Gun Policy and Research and associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Manage-ment. “Our analysis found that the states

with strong regulations and oversight of gun dealers, as well as regulation of private sellers, have far less gun trafficking than do states that lack these measures.” Federal law requires gun dealers to be licensed by the ATF, keep records of sales and ensure that purchasers have passed a background check. Some states place addi-tional regulations over gun retailers such as mandatory inspections and anti-theft secu-rity measures. Federal gun law also permits private sellers to transfer guns without a background check or record keeping. Fifteen states regulate gun sales by all private sellers, and two additional states regulate private gun sales at gun shows. For the study, researchers examined state laws governing gun sales using data from ATF crime gun traces from 54 U.S. cities. The analysis also included a survey of law enforcement agencies’ practices to promote compliance with gun sale laws and data tracing the initial point of sale of guns recovered from crimes. A gun was consid-ered to have been trafficked if it had been purchased within a year of being recovered from a crime scene, unless the criminal was the legal purchaser of record. The vari-ables examined included strong gun dealer regulation and oversight, state and local

Gun sales: Regulation, oversight cut trafficking to criminalslaw enforcement agency use of undercover stings of gun dealers, regulation of private gun sales, laws requiring a permit or license to purchase a handgun and limiting the purchase of guns to one per customer per month. According to the study, cities with the lowest levels of in-state gun trafficking were Santa Ana, Calif.; Camden and Newark, N.J.; New York; and Boston. Each was in a state that regulates private sales of handguns, four had strong gun dealer oversight, and four had discretionary handgun purchase licensing systems. Cities with the highest levels of in-state gun trafficking were Gary and Indianapolis, Ind.; Tucson and Phoenix, Ariz.; and Albuquerque, N.M. None of these cities had any of the gun sales accountability measures examined in the study. Overall, in-state gun trafficking was two to four times higher in cities located in states without these gun sales regulations. The study found no effect on gun trafficking within the state from laws limiting handgun

sales to a maximum of one gun per person per month. (The study did not examine the effect of one-gun-per-month laws on interstate trafficking. Findings from prior studies of these laws suggest that they reduce interstate gun trafficking.) “While some have questioned the ability of gun sales regulations to keep guns from criminals, our findings are consistent with other studies which found that measures intended to enhance gun seller account-ability can significantly curtail the flow of new guns to criminals,” said co-author Jon Vernick, co-director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research and associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management. In 2005, firearms were used in more than 12,000 homicides in the United States, with 84 percent occurring in large- and medium-sized metropolitan areas. The research was supported by grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacAr-thur Foundation and the Joyce Foundation.


Notices B U L L E T I N B O A R D

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’05 Chevy Cobalt, automatic, black, 100K mi guarantee, excel cond, 58K mi. $7,600. 443-823-6566 or [email protected].

Items for sale

Orioles tickets, Fri, August 28, 7:05pm, O’s vs Indians, lower reserve (section 64); I have lots. $15. 410-458-2878 or g_deise@yahoo .com.

Men’s Raleigh road bike. $150. 443-415-6018 or [email protected].

Ethan Allen cherry wood Queen Anne din-ing rm table, $250; Queen Anne cherry cof-fee table, $75. 410-825-0851.

Air conditioner, almost new, 5,000 BTUs, $50; twin mattress, $20; dual coffee maker w/travel mugs (2), $10; slow cooker, $5; sets of dishes, bowls, cups, etc. fengwu62@yahoo .com.

Chests of drawers (2), $75 (5-drawer) and $40 (3-drawer); Friedrich air conditioner, 6,000 BTUs, $40. 410-821-0244.

Digital TV converter box w/antenna, $35; sm Ikea “Billy” bookshelf, $40; air condi-tioner w/remote, 12,000 BTUs, $200; air conditioner, 5,200 BTUs, $80. 410-807-5979 or [email protected].

Twin mattress w/boxspring, $60; 6-drawer chest, $40; side table, $10; new cordless phone, $10. [email protected].

Ikea “Tromso” metal loft bed and twin mat-tress, disassembled, ready for pickup. $100. [email protected].

Beach chairs (2), elliptical, digital piano, reciprocating saw, 3-step ladder, stool, chair, computer, printer, microwave. 410-455-5858 or [email protected].

Home theater projector w/built-in DVD play-er (Optoma DV10 MovieTime), region-free patch applied. $300. [email protected].

Corner computer desk, wood, black, used 1 semester. $35/best offer. 410-377-7354.

Desk from Office Depot, glass top and gray metal, $65; Apple G3, $50. 443-527-0782.

Jimmy Buffet tickets, Sept 3 at Nissan Pavil-ion, pavilion seats (4). $149/ea (less than face value). [email protected].

serVIces/Items offereD or WaNteD

Wanted: good home for mixed, spayed F golden lab, 20 mos old, housetrained, cur-rent shots. 301-483-9815 or [email protected].

Horse boarding, Worthington Valley, beauti-ful trails from farm 20 mins from JHU. $500/mo (stall board) or $250/mo (field board). [email protected].

Business or personal mobile detailing, nego-tiable low rates. 443-421-3659 or [email protected].

Shenyun Performing Arts at the Kennedy Center, 10% off w/code “HOPKINS10” for JHU employees. http://dc.tickets.divineshows .com.

Time to Shine cleaning services, pet-friendly, free estimates, reasonable rates. 443-528-3637.

Pre-med training program looking for beta-testers, free access to materials in exchange for feedback, apply online. http://bit.ly/premed.

Teacher off for summer, avail for lawns, landscaping, painting, good refs, fair prices. 443-846-7766.

Dinosaur Name Poems, art and poetry book by Hopkins poet-surgeon, bilingual. www .dinosaurnamepoems.org.

Home daycare in friendly, lovely environ-ment (Timonium area), 10% off for Hopkins employees. [email protected].

Grasscutting, weeding, exterior painting, caulking, odd jobs. John, 410-419-3902.

Seeking musicians (keyboard, drums, vocals, sax, guitar) for sm Cockeysville church. 410-628-7333 or 443-413-1603.

Advanced registered nurse, licensed/certified, avail for priv duty, prof’l refs. 410-719-0741.

JHI seeking Greek-speaking interpreter, as-needed basis. $35-$45/hr. [email protected] (submit resume).

PT nanny needed, mid-August 2009 through mid-June 2010, to care for 9-mo-old, Tues/Thurs and half-Wed in Towson, early child-hood education degree, infant CPR/first-aid training and refs req’d, own transportation. 410-583-5262 or [email protected].

Affordable landscaper/certified horticulturist can maintain existing gardens, also design, plantings, masonry; free consultations. 410-683-7373 or [email protected].

Tutor avail: all subjects/levels; remedial, gifted and talented; also college counseling, speech and essay writing, editing, proofread-ing. 410-337-9877 or [email protected].

Friday Night Swing Dance Club, open to public, no partners necessary. 410-583-7337 or www.fridaynightswing.com.

Great DJ avail for all occasions, experienced, wide variety, good rates. Ed, 410-499-5848 or [email protected].

Guitar lessons w/experienced teacher, begin-ner through advanced, many styles taught, will travel. Joe, 410-215-0693.

Virus trouble? Slow computer? Prof’l IT services, wireless network, printers, remote access; reasonable rates, student discount. [email protected].

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

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

s c h o o l s o f P u b l i c h e a l t h a n d N u r s i n g

h o m e w o o d 39069 Institutional Research Analyst (Division)39093 Tutorial Specialist Distance Education32872 Sr. Instructional Facilitator33212 Sr. Systems Architect/Computing Lead, Advanced Camera for Surveys33786 Marketing Designer37909 Technical Facility Manager 38683 Assistant Curator 39028 Virtual Observatory Data Scientist39052 Marketing Coordinator/ Project Coordinator39205 Walters Art Intern39212 Research Policy Analyst39312 Multimedia Systems Specialist36087 Sr. Instrument Designer36438 Electronic Resources Acquisitions Librarian36657 Librarian, Data Services and Government Information38432 Acquisitions Editor38983 Software Engineer39172 Nonprofit Research Project Coordinator39214 Exhibits and Advertising Coordinator38906 Maintenance Services Coordinator38423 Programmer Analyst

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

35736 Export Control Officer36257 DE Instructor, CTY36971 Grant Accountant38129 Software Engineer38228 Institutional Research Specialist38346 Assistant Program Manager, CTY38364 LifeSpan Services Specialist38901 Sr. Software Engineer, Student Systems and Educational Technologies39043 Benefits Consultant / Team Lead39240 Employee Assistance Clinician33511 Teaching Assistant, CTY37455 LAN Administrator38677 Curriculum Specialist38736 Collection Specialist38996 Arts and Crafts Instructor38998 Sports Instructor39000 Camp Counselor39001 Lifeguard

Office of Human Resources:2021 East Monument St., 410-955-3006JoB# PosItIoN

40416 Community Health Worker37730 Sr. Education Coordinator39780 Sr. Technical Writer39607 Sr. Research Program Coordinator II40472 Financial Manager40413 Research Data Manager39424 Sr. Research Nurse40215 Sr. Academic Program Coordinator40400 Multi Technical Supervisor40403 Admissions Coordinator39387 Administrator38979 Research Specialist39153 Laboratory Manager40046 Research Aide40192 Administrative Coordinator40196 Administrative Coordinator

38762 Resident Adviser38680 Research Nurse40665 Administrative Coordinator37783 Nutrition Technician39308 Software Engineer 40122 Research Data Coordinator39306 Programmer Analyst39296 Data Assistant39507 Operations Manager40045 Research Aide39725 Program Officer II39977 Budget Analyst40431 Technical Adviser40328 YAC Co-Facilitator 38840 Communications Specialist31859 Biostatistician40274 Sr. Administrative Coordinator 39018 Research Program Assistant38886 Research Assistant40195 Academic Program Manager40186 Academic Program Administrator39714 Dietitian 39063 Research Assistant39582 Sr. Technical Support Analyst

P O S T I N G S

s c h o o l o f m e d i c i n e

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

38035 Assistant Administrator35677 Sr. Financial Analyst30501 Nurse Midwife22150 Physician Assistant

38064 Administrative Specialist37442 Sr. Administrative Coordinator37260 Sr. Administrative Coordinator38008 Sponsored Project Specialist36886 Program Administrator

410-243-1216105 West 39th St. • Baltimore, MD 21210

Managed by The Broadview at Roland ParkBroadviewApartments.com

• 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 JohnsHopkins University Homewood Campus and minutes from downtown Baltimore.

Woodcliffe Manor ApartmentsSPA 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 RO L A N D PA R K

academic year should register fo the Home-wood Student Job Fair. For more information and to register, call 410-516-8421 or go to www.jhu.edu/stujob, click first “Student Job Fair” and then “Employer Registration.”


ClassifiedsaPartmeNts/houses for reNt

Bayview area, 2BR house w/fin’d bsmt, W/D, prkng pad, walk to JHBMC, no pets, sec dep + utils. Elaine, 410-633-4750.

Canton, 2.5BR, 1.5BA energy-efficient house, CAC, huge bsmt, lots of free prkng. $1,500/mo. Amy, 410-303-6070 or [email protected] (for info/pics).

Canton, beautiful, 2BR, 2.5BA rehabbed TH, great location, conv to JHH. $1,800/mo. Courtney, 410-340-6762.

Canton/Patterson Park (200 blk S Bouldin), 2-3BR, 1BA house, dw, W/D, CAC, fp, new paint/crpt, fin’d bsmt, lg kitchen. $1,175/mo + utils. Scott, 443-817-2352 or [email protected].

Canton, 2BR, 1BA RH, 3-story, loft, stain-less steel appls, patio, rooftop, 1.5 blks off Square. 303-909-4958.

Catonsville, furn’d 3BR house in great neighborhood, conv to shops/restaurants/schools, living rm, dining rm, eat-in kitchen, family rm, guest space w/BA, 20 mins to Homewood and E Baltimore. Sharon, 410-455-0746 or [email protected].

Cedarcroft, 3BR, 1.5B TH, dw, W/D. $1,250/mo + utils. 410-378-2393.

Charles Village, 1BR, 1BA condo, very spa-cious living rm, dining area, kitchen, priv entry, patio. $1,100/mo + elec. 443-858-9118 or [email protected].

Charles Village, charming 3BR, 1.5BA house, W/D, dw, semi-fin’d bsmt, back deck, 2-car prkng pad, avail Sept 1. $1,700/mo + utils. 410-371-3512.

Cross Keys, 1BR, 1BA apt w/patio, pool, tennis, stainless steel kitchen, avail 9/15. $1,150/mo. Laura, 410-299-6795.

Deer Isle, Maine, 4BR, 1.5BA farmhouse (ca

M A R K E T P L A C E

1812) overlooking Penobscot Bay, avail late Aug-Oct, by wk or month. 410-544-1704 or [email protected].

Federal Hill, 2BR, 1BA TH close to every-thing, hdwd flrs (1st level), w/w crpt (2nd level), W/D, bsmt storage, fenced patio, 2 blks south of market. $1,300/mo. 410-666-1603 or [email protected].

Fells Point, 1BR condo w/patio, CAC, W/D, w/w crpt, prkng incl’d, pets allowed, 24-hr security. $1,375/mo + utils. Emily, 616-610-7456 or [email protected].

Hampden, 2BR, 1BA RH less than 1 mi to Homewood campus, partly furn’d/unfurn’d, pref faculty or grad student. $1,250/mo + utils. [email protected].

Homeland, 3BR, 2BA TH, hdwd flrs, fp, new kitchen and appls, CAC, deck, fenced yd, garage. $1,850/mo. 215-694-3789 or [email protected].

Lutherville, sunny, furn’d 3-4BR, 3BA house, quiet neighborhood, wonderful schools, hdwd flrs, nr 695/I-83. $1,600/mo + utils. 410-853-7496 or [email protected].

Mt Washington, huge 2BR, 2BA w/loft, safe area, hdwd flrs, vaulted ceilings, W/D, dw, fp, balcony, garage, great view, nr everything. $1,500/mo. 301-525-4505 or ufruth@yahoo .com.

Mt Vernon, sublet of studio apt in safe neighborhood behind Washington Monu-ment, well-lighted, wide closet, avail August 17-October 31 (can be extended), 10 mins to Inner Harbor. $525/mo incl water, heat, trash removal. 443-527-8963.

Mt Vernon, 2BR apt, living rm, dining rm, kitchen, AC, W/D, enclosed patio, prkng, nr JHU shuttle/MTA, avail 8/15. $1,100/mo. 410-591-2611.

Mt Washington, 3BR, 3.5BA TH in nice neighborhood, AC, heating, W/D, hdwd/crpt flrs, deck, prkng spaces (2), 10-20 mins to JHU/JHH, nr Summit Park ES. $1,800/mo + utils. 410-419-1731.

NYC (Manhattan Club timeshare) penthouse unit at 200 W 56th St, 2 full BAs, kitchen-ette w/dining table, refrigerator, microwave, dw, flat screen TVs, computer in rm, rooftop patios, more. $350/night incl all taxes. 443-327-6546.

Ocean City, 2BR, 2BA condo on 124th St, ocean block, AC, W/D, close to restau-rants/shopping/activities, full and miniweeks avail. 443-987-8407.

Ocean City, 3BR, 2BA condo on ocean block, 137th St, lg pool, walk to beach/restaurant/entertainment, 1/2 blk to shuttle. 410-544-2814.

Patterson Park, 2BR, 1.5BA house, hdwd flrs, crpt upstairs, stainless steel appls, sky-light, expos’d brick, 1.25 mi to Hopkins. $1,100/mo. 443-286-4883.

Rodgers Forge, 3BR TH, 2 full BAs, CAC, W/D, community park/gazebo, Baltimore Co schools. $1,640/mo. dickgeorge@comcast .net.

Roland Park, furn’d 3BR TH in friendly neighborhood, bike to JHU, Roland Park school district. $1,100/mo. Al, 410-667-3167.

Towson, 4BR, 2BA Cape Cod w/CAC, W/D, new kitchen, hdwd flrs, deck, walk to downtown Towson/public transportation, avail 8/15. $1,750/mo. 410-842-5257.

Washington Hill/Upper Fells Point area, 3BR, 2BA condo, W/D, CAC, walk to JHMI, avail 8/15. $1,500/mo. 410-276-0074 or [email protected].

Huge 2BR, 2BA condo w/front desk, pool, balcony, CAC, steps to JHMI shuttle, avail mid-August, all utils incl’d. [email protected].

Rms in new TH, within walking distance to JHMC, no smoking/no pets. 301-717-4217 or [email protected].

Sunny 2BR, 2.5BA TH, CAC, W/D, 10-min walk to Homewood campus, ideal for room-mates. $1,500/mo. [email protected].

2907 St Paul St, 1BR apts in safe, quiet neighborhood, hdwd flrs, off-street prkng avail w/added fee, avail 8/1 and 9/1. $800/mo or $850/mo incl heat, water. murilo_ [email protected].

houses for sale

Cedarcroft, charming, furn’d Victorian farmhouse, 2BR, 1.5BAs, living rm, dining rm, den, office, kitchen, W/D, marble fps, hdwd flrs, lg yd, patio, shed, offstreet prkng. $315,000. [email protected].

Cross Keys Village, 1BR condo, hdwd flrs, CAC/heat, 24-hr security, swimming pool, free prkng. $136,888. 646-284-2279 or [email protected].

Fallston, 4BR, 2.5BA single-family house on 1.7 acres, peaceful country setting, new crpt/paint, home warranty, fin’d bsmt, move-in ready, view at www.trulia.com/property/ 1078240123-2510-Fox-Rd-Fallston-MD-21047. $358,500. [email protected].

Federal Hill, immaculate 2BR, 2.5BA house on quiet, tree-lined street, prkng, amazing harbor view, nr JHH, MLS#:BA6989568. $329,900. 410-752-3005.

Hampden, totally renov’d 3BR, 2.5BA house w/screened porch, fenced yd, priv prkng, walk to Homewood campus/shops/restaurants/grocers/theater. $310,000. 919-607-5860 or 410-962-5417.

Classified listings are a free ser-vice for current, full-time Hop-kins faculty, staff and students only. Ads should adhere to these general guidelines:

• Oneadperpersonperweek.A new request must be submitted for each issue. • Adsarelimitedto20words, including phone, fax and e-mail.

• WecannotuseJohnsHopkins business phone numbers or e-mail addresses.• Submissionswillbecondensedat the editor’s discretion. • DeadlineisatnoonMonday, one week prior to the edition in which the ad is to be run.• Realestatelistingsmaybeoffered 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 attach-ments) to [email protected]; or mailed to Gazette Classifieds, Suite 540, 901 S. Bond St., Bal-timore, MD 21231. To purchase a boxed display ad, contact the Gazelle Group at 410-343-3362.

PlacINgaDs

Roland Park, 2BR co-op next to Home-wood campus, short walk to JHH shuttle. $148,000. 443-615-5190.

Towson/Loch Raven Village (1609 Cottage Lane), 3BR, 2BA TH w/fin’d bsmt, CAC, hdwd flrs, nice patio, shed, easy commute to JHU, move-in cond, open Sundays, 11am- 3pm. $247,500. [email protected].

Tuscany/Canterbury, 5BR EOG TH on quiet, one-way street, full bsmt, porch, sm garden, garage, walk to Homewood campus/JHU and Peabody shuttles/Roland Park schools. $459,000. [email protected].

Wyman Park (JHU/BMA area), fully renov’d 3BR, 2BA TH w/hdwd flrs, CAC/heat, 2-car garage. $299,900. 410-581-4939 or [email protected].

2233 Gough St, rehabbed 2BR, 2.5BA house w/open flr plan, hdwd flrs, expos’d brick. Chris, 410-967-9896.

roommates WaNteD

Rm in 2BR, 2BA Towson condo, quiet, gated community, amazing views, closet space, new granite/stainless in kitchen, Verizon Fios hi-speed cable/Internet. $662/mo incl elec. 240-626-6590 or [email protected].

F nonsmoker wanted for 1BR in 2BR W University Pkwy apt, share w/F grad student, AC, heat, hot water, 10 mins to campus, no pets, start Sept. $515/mo + 1/2 utils. [email protected].

Rm avail on medical campus, safe area, walk to any bldg/shopping/transportation, free W/D and Internet, share w/JHU students. [email protected].

Share 2BR, 2BA mid-rise until mid-August, 1/2 mi to campus, security, pool, W/D. $650/mo incl utils. [email protected].

Furn’d 1BR, own BA in 3BR Fells Point apt, W/D, free Internet access, quiet street, 15-min walk to SoM, compensation for monthly bus pass avail for student and postdoc. $400/mo + utils. Zhan, [email protected].

Share lg fully furn’d house nr local hospitals/universities, ideal for med students, residents or researchers, short-term OK. 410-889-2940 or [email protected].

Rm (choice of 2) in updated E Patterson Park RH, fully furn’d, full kitchen, CAC, W/D, entertainment sys, workout area, share w/24-yr-old M. $675/mo + utils ($150/mo incl wireless Internet, full cable) + sec dep ($700). 650-867-8334.

Share 2BR, 2BA apt in Mt Washington, own BA, furn’d common area, CAC, W/D, free prkng. $458/mo + utils. 443-854-2303.

BR in 3BR, 2BA TH in E Balto, renov’d, new flr/crpt, fully furn’d, CAC, big kitchen, sep dining area, 1 blk to SPH and SoM. $500/mo incl elec, high-speed Internet, W/D + sec dep. Kim, [email protected].

Rm avail in 3BR Randallstown house, nr Owings Mills. $550/mo incl phone, wireless. [email protected].

Share 3BR, 2.5BA penthouse apt in Hamp-den, off the Avenue, W/D, CAC, lg kitchen,

Studio Apts. available from $800 per month including gas, water, heat and optional furniture for

an 8-12 month lease term.

The Baltimorean Apartments

410-889-4157 www.baltimoreanapartments.com

WYMAN COURT APTS. (BEECH AVE.) Effic. from $550 - 1 BD Apt. from $675 -2 BD from $775

HICKORY HEIGHTS APTS. (HICKORY AVE.) 2 BD units from $750

Shown by Appointment 410-764-7776

www.brooksmanagementcompany.com

Johns Hopkins/Hamden

Continued on page 10

Rent In Historic 1891 Elevator Secured Bldg. Central to all JH! Brand New Units: Only 12 left!

$950-1000 1BD, 1BA, $1200 1 BD + den +2 Full BA $1250-$1400 2 BD 2 Full BA

All with full size W/D, D/W, micro., carpet, CAC, Free off-street parking. 2300 N. Calvert St.

(410) 764-7776 www.BrooksManagementCompany.com

Canton-Fells Pt.-Patterson Pk.-Mt. Vernon Great 1, 2, & 3 bedroom rehabbed townhomes and apartments available! Competitive prices. Call Brooke,

410-342-2205 or visit our website:

www.cantonmangement.com

Upper Fells Point - Walk to JHMI

New Luxury TH, 3BD-3.5 BA, w/all modern amenities: Chef's kitchen, CAC, W/D, HWD Fls., garage, terraces w/ city views, gas FP.

$479,000. 410-732-3739 or [email protected]

For Rent - 2614 N. Calvert St. Newly refurbished Row-home on great block,

walk to campus/shuttles, 5BD-2BA, front porch, rear deck, garage, eat-in kitchen, original floors and

woodwork. $2200/mo. 202-746-7970 [email protected]

Move in NOW! Freshly cleaned & painted. Private, quiet 2BD, 2.5BA, large closets, wd floors, FP, reno-vated kit. W/D, cable-ready, free parking/use of pools & courts.

$1,400. mo. + sec. deposit. Call Peg, 410- 554-3600 ext. 129

[email protected]

CROSS KEYS TOWNHOUSE Upstairs - 3BD, 2BA, full kitchen and laundry!

LEASE or SALE - Pristine split LVL w/2 Units in Timonium, patio, yard, county schools. Min. to I-83, light rail, shops. $1950.00mo. Avail NOW. No pets

or smoking, please! [email protected]

Downstairs, 2BD, 1BA, full kit/laundry, direct parking!

Ruxton - Rent 90 year old cottage! Lovely, fully updated, quiet, resid., executive neighborhood. 3BD, 1.5BA, CAC, remodeled kitchen. Large decks overlooking creek. Priv. 1/2 acre, landscaped lot. Riderwood Elementary. Easy access to 695-I83. $2750/mo+ util.+ 1 mo. security deposit. Avail. mid-September.

Contact: 443 829 7721


I N f o r m a t I o N s e s s I o N s

mon., aug. 3, 12:15 p.m. Information session for the Connection Community Consultants Group, a program that assists with short-term, small team projects that respond to community identified needs. Sponsored by SOURCE. W2015 SPH. eB

s e m I N a r s

mon., aug. 3, 10 a.m. “Examining Early Family Risk for the Development of Childhood Aggressive and Disruptive Behavior and Adolescent Outcomes,” a Mental Health thesis defense seminar with Keri Jowers. 845 Hampton House. eB

mon., aug. 3, 10 a.m. “The Neighbor-hood Physical Environment and Cardio-vascular Disease Risk Factors: Implica-tions for Policy,” a Health Policy and Management thesis defense seminar with Lydia Isaac. E6519 SPH. eB

mon., aug. 17, 1 p.m. “Coital Fre-quency and Risk Perception as Predictors of HIV Acquisition Risk Among Men in Rakai, Uganda: Longitudinal Analysis of Data From 1997–2006,” a Population,

Family and Reproductive Health thesis defense seminar with Chizoba Wonodi. E4130 SPH. eB

s P e c I a l e V e N t s

tues., aug. 4, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Research Poster Session for the Diversity Summer Internship Program. Sponsored by the SPH Student Diversity Office. E2030 SPH (Feinstone Hall). eB

thurs., aug. 13, 2:30 to 5 p.m. Research Poster Session for the DIVE Scholars 2009 Research Experience, fea-turing the work of interns in the Drug Investigations, Violence and Environmen-tal Studies Lab. Sponsored by Mental Health. E2030 SPH (Feinstone Hall). eB

t h e a t e r

thurs., aug. 13, and fri., aug. 14, 7 p.m.; sat., aug. 15, 2 and 7 p.m. and sun., aug. 16, 5 p.m. The Uni-fied Voices of Johns Hopkins presents the 1980s rock musical Little Shop of Horrors. Tickets are $10; current Johns Hopkins staff and students will be admitted Thurs-day for $5, with valid ID. To purchase tickets go to www.hopkinsmedicine.org/unifiedvoices or call 410-955-8888. Turn-er Auditorium. eB

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

eB East BaltimorehW HomewoodPctB Preclinical Teaching Buildingsom School of MedicinesoN School of NursingsPh School of Public HealthWBsB Wood Basic Science Building

CalendarKey

Calendar

A U G . 3 – 1 7

B y D a v i D m a r c h

Jophns Hopkins Medicine

Tuberculosis experts at Johns Hop-kins have evidence from a four-year series of experiments in mice that

anti-inflammatory drugs could eventually prove effective in treating the highly con-tagious lung disease, adding to current antibiotic therapies. The Johns Hopkins scientists are plan-ning further experiments in animals infected with TB to find out if any of the already approved anti-inflammatory drugs—phosphodiesterase inhibitors, such as sildenafil citrate (Viagra), and adenylate cyclase inhibitors—would work. The new study results, reported in the July 2 issue of Nature, not only offer prom-ise of a complementary or alternative ther-apy to antibiotics but also open the door to vaccines designed to block the TB bac-terium’s inflammatory chemical pathways, the researchers say. The disease, caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, each year infects nearly 9 million people worldwide, and kills 1.7 million. The research team bases its claim on its recent studies in mice showing precisely how disease-causing TB bacteria provoke an inflammatory response in immune sys-tem cells and surrounding lung tissue, and that blocking the action of a key inflamma-tion-triggering enzyme, a type of adenylate cyclase, stalled TB disease. The scientists said their findings are believed to be the first and most detailed explanation of how the invading bacterium evades the immune system and instead is protected by it, thus fostering infection.

“Traditional approaches for treating TB have focused on using antibiotics to directly target and kill the bacterium after infec-tion, eventually ridding it from the body, whereas our results suggest a new route to interrupt post-infection inflammation and disease progression, thus hindering bacte-rial spread within tissues,” said study senior investigator and infectious disease special-ist William Bishai. The new study showed how the highly contagious bacterium evades macrophage immune system cells meant to destroy it by spiking production within the infected cells of inflammation-triggering chemicals, such as cyclic-adenosine monophosphate, or cAMP, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha. Production of TNF-alpha is largely stimu-lated by cAMP, which is secreted into infected cells by the bacterium, and TNF-alpha signals other immune system cells to attack and isolate infected cells, a key part of inflammation. In people with TB, Bishai said, the process produces a “paradoxical effect.” Instead of acting as a natural defense against the pathogen that cordons off the bacterial infection, the increased inflam-mation produces tiny telltale lesions of dead lung tissue that harbor pools of live bacteria. Bishai, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, noted that it has been known since the 1920s that inflammation and small lung granulomas were a key part of TB disease, and since the 1970s that TB infection elicits an initial spike in cAMP levels inside infected cells. Until now, however, scientists had assumed that this burst of cAMP was simply the cells’ initial response to the lung tissue damage caused

Fighting tuberculosis with anti-inflammatory drugs possibleby TB disease. “We were surprised to find out that this inflammation was the result of the microbe manipulating macrophages and causing the spread of TB,” he said. In the first series of experiments, the TB team, led by Nisheeth Agarwal, a postdoc-toral research fellow in infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins, tracked that first burst of cAMP directly back to the time of initial infection. Tests of live and dead bacteria showed that only live bacteria produced any initial uptick in the inflammation-signaling chemical, in which macrophages were tested in the lab at several hourly intervals post-infection. Realizing then that this chemical burst of activity could play a key role in spreading the infection, the Johns Hopkins team set out to determine what, if any, other down-stream inflammatory reactions occurred, as cAMP production is well-known to rev up production of other inflammatory chemi-cals, most notably TNF-alpha. Further experiments by the team identi-fied the gene mostly responsible for these boosted levels of cAMP, linking its unique hyperactivity to at least one of 17 signaling enzymes, adenylate cyclases, which stimu-late cAMP production. Bishai’s interest in the enzymes—in particular, the adenylate cyclase whose production is tied to gene Rv0386—was prompted by the fact that M. tuberculosis has so many of them. Most bacteria have only one. Blocking Rv0386 led to a 10-fold drop two months after TB infection in the number of bacteria seen in mouse lung tis-sue samples, extracted and then grown in the lab, when compared to infected mice with unhindered Rv0386 production. Less active Rv0386 also led to as much as an 80 percent drop in macrophage cAMP levels, plus a 50 percent decline in infected cell secretions of TNF-alpha, which Agarwal said “indicates a much milder case of TB disease.”

Agarwal said that the team’s immediate next steps are to map out the full biochemi-cal equation in the spread of TB within the body, most notably how upped production of TNF-alpha manifests disease progres-sion. This, too, he said, could lead to “even more novel inflammatory targets for drug and vaccine development.” TB remains the leading cause of death worldwide among those with HIV and AIDS and is epidemic in developing coun-tries with the highest HIV-infection rates. The nonprofit Global Alliance for TB Drug Development estimates that 1 billion peo-ple worldwide will be infected with tuber-culosis by the year 2020. Conventional TB therapy is considered cumbersome, even though it cures on average 95 percent of patients who finish taking their medica-tions as originally prescribed. Standard treatment consists of a mix of antibiotics, typically four, given in view of a caregiver and taken together for six months. Bishai and colleagues conducted their research from 2005 through 2008 with funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a member of the National Institutes of Health. In addition to Bishai and Agarwal, researchers from Johns Hopkins involved in this study were Gyanu Lamichhane, Radhika Gupta and Scott Nolan.

Related Web sitescenter for tB research laboratory at Johns hopkins: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/dom/ tb_lab

‘Nature’: www.nature.com/nature/journal/ vaop/ncurrent/index.html

B y a u D r e y h u a n G


Nearly all species have some ability to detect light. At least three types of cells in the retina allow us to see

images or distinguish between night and day. Now, researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have discovered in fish yet another type of cell that can sense light and contribute to vision. Reporting July 26 in Nature, the team of neuroscientists shows that retinal horizontal cells, which are nerve cells once thought to talk only to neighboring nerve cells and not even to the brain, are light-sensitive them-selves. “This is mind-boggling,” said King-Wai Yau, a professor of neuroscience in the Solo-mon H. Snyder Department of Neurosci-ence at Johns Hopkins. “For more than 100 years, it’s been known that rod cells and cone cells are responsible for sensing light and, therefore, vision,” Yau said. “Then, about seven years ago, another light sensor was discovered in the retina, revealing a third type of light-sensitive cells in mammals, so we set out to look at whether this was true in other vertebrates as well.” Focusing their efforts on the melanopsin light sensor, which is responsible for sensing day and night but barely involved—in mam-mals, at least—in seeing images, Yau’s team looked for melanopsin-containing cells in other vertebrates and found some in the reti-nal horizontal cells in goldfish and catfish. Catfish contain two flavors of retinal hori-zontal cells: those that connect to cone cells, which respond to bright light, and those that connect to rod cells, which respond to dim light. The team took electrical read-ings from single isolated retinal horizontal cells and found that light caused a change in electrical current in cone horizontal cells but not in rod horizontal cells.

Horizontal cells, Yau says, allow cross-talk between neighboring photoreceptor cells, allowing these cells to compare the light they sense, a process necessary for the brain to see images. “The brain processes what it sees in context to the surroundings,” Yau said. “This allows our brain to see borders and contours; horizontal cells are the reason why we can recognize and see a face, for example.” Testing light at different wavelengths, the team found that these fish horizontal cells are thousands of times less light-sensitive than their partner cone cells. “The bottom line is that the light effect on the horizontal cells is subtle, perhaps to allow the eyes of these animals to fine-tune their functions to different ambient light conditions,” Yau said. “But [the fact] that these horizontal cells are light-sensitive at all is a very surprising finding and changes how we think about retinas as a whole.” Learning more about how the light sensi-tivity of horizontal cells contributes to image vision will require studying whole retinas, not just single cells. Yau, whose goal is to understand vision, is hooked. “Maybe,” he said, “there are still other photosensitive cells in the eye that we don’t know about yet.” This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Antonio Cham-palimaud Vision Award. Authors on the paper are Ning Cheng, Takashi Tsunenari and Yau, all of Johns Hopkins.

Related Web sites ‘Nature’: www.nature.com/nature/index .html

King-Wai yau: http://neuroscience.jhu.edu/ KingWaiYau.php

Johns Hopkins researchers make‘eye-catching’ vision discovery

august 3, 2009 - the gazette

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