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october 31, 2011 The newspaper of The Johns Hopkins university Volume 41 No. 10

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I N B r I e f

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Webb Telescope; holiday turkey program

C a L e N D a r

Peabody Opera Potpourri; universal design

workshop; ‘Here There Be Monsters’ talk2 12

O U T R E A C H

CSOS moves to School of EducationB y G r e G r i e n z i

The Gazette

The Center for Social Organi-zation of Schools, a 45-year-old institution that has helped

change the landscape of K-12 education nationally, now calls the Johns Hopkins School of Education home.

CSOS officially moved on Oct. 21, ending its long and successful rela-tionship with the School of Arts and Sciences. Leadership of CSOS and the School of Education said that the new

collaboration would be “mutually ben-eficial” and allow the School of Educa-tion to expand nationally its efforts in school reform. “CSOS has a long-standing, excellent reputation dealing with nonacademic barriers and closing the achievement gap,” said David Andrews, dean of the School of Education. “We are pleased to enter into this new relationship. We see it as a great fit with the School of Education and what we are trying to accomplish with U.S. school reform. It’s our vision to be a major contributor in this area, implementing best practices that will work.” James McPartland, co-director of CSOS and a professor of sociology in the Krieger School, said that the time was right. McPartland said that the move was first considered not long after the School of Education—a discipline at Johns Hopkins since 1909—was estab-lished as a separate division in 2007. “The School of Education is really our natural home at Johns Hopkins,” said McPartland, who joined Johns Hopkins in 1968 and became CSOS director in 1976. “The still relatively new School of Education has been broadening its focus from local to national school reform, so it’s more of a close match for us now. The school’s goal to become a national leader

Continued on page 6

O R G A N I Z A T I O N

Leadership

says new

pairing is

‘mutually

beneficial’

Continued on page 4

New 4,000-square-footgarden welcomes JHUaffiliates and neighbors

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

The Gazette

Sowing the seeds of community

A community garden will take root this fall on the Johns Hopkins at Eastern campus, thanks to the nurturing efforts of a small group of students

and the support of several university offices. The garden was the idea of representa-tives from Real Food Hopkins, a student-run group committed to bringing local, sustain-

able, humane and fairly priced food to the Homewood campus and the sur-rounding Baltimore area. The group had been cultivating a small garden behind 3105 N. Charles St. but learned that they could no longer use the site (though it’s since been reinstated).

Switching IV to pill form of drugs could save millions R E S E A R C H

Continued on page 9

Study by Johns Hopkins researchers finds potential for huge cost savings

B y S t e p h a n i e D e S m o n

Johns Hopkins Medicine

Switching hospitalized patients able to take medication by mouth from intra-venous to pill forms of the same drugs

could safely save millions of dollars a year, new Johns Hopkins research suggests. In a review of computerized records for the year 2010 at The Johns Hopkins Hos-pital, the researchers estimated savings of more than $1.1 million in the Department of Medicine alone—not including surgical patients—by swapping out four commonly prescribed IV medications with their oral equivalents. A report on the study is pub-lished in the journal Clinical Therapeutics. “Our study looked at just four drugs admin-istered by one department in one hospital in

one year and found more than a million dollars in potential savings,” said Brandyn D. Lau, a medical informatics specialist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the study’s leader. “Imagine if every hospital took a hard look at substitut-ing oral medications for IV ones whenever possible. We’re talking about an enormous financial impact, with no risk to patients.” According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, roughly 12 percent

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Plotting the plan for the community garden project on the Johns Hopkins at eastern campus are audrey Swanenberg, anna Belous, raychel Santo and Wei-ting Chen.

2 THE GAZETTE • August 15, 20112 THE GAZETTE • October 31, 2011

I N B R I E F

On the path to Pluto: APL creates New Horizons app

The team behind the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt has launched a free app that takes

iPhone and iPad users along on this his-toric voyage to the planetary frontier. Now available in the iTunes App Store, New Horizons: A NASA Voyage to Pluto brings users the latest news and pictures from the mission, as well as details on the spacecraft and scientific instruments, and offers access to educational activities. Produced by programmers at APL—which built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA—the app includes reports from the New Horizons news center and Twitter feed, images taken by New Horizons from space, videos that tell the New Horizons story and a “tour” of the spacecraft. It also offers a locator for following the spacecraft along its path toward Pluto, and a countdown clock to check how much time remains—down to the second—before it sails past the dwarf planet on July 14, 2015. Another tool connects users to the “Ice Hunters” program to find potential New Horizons flyby targets in the Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto. To download the app, go to itunes.com/apps/newhorizonsanasavoyagetopluto.

Two JHU teams in Collegiate Inventors Competition finals

Two student teams from Johns Hop-kins—one each in the undergraduate and graduate categories—have made

it to the finals in the Collegiate Inventors Competition. The program, now in its 21st year, is run by Invent Now, a nonprofit organization that recognizes and encourages invention in people of all ages. This year’s 11 finalists are in the biomedical engineering, cancer research and IT fields. The undergraduate team—Ryan Chang, Steven Dalvin, Ashkay Krishnaswamy and James Lin, advised by Gerard E. Mullin—developed QuanTube, a replacement gastric feeding tube designed for nonspecialist use. The graduate team—Deok-Ho Kim and Kshitiz Gupta, advised by Andre Levchenko—created a nanopatterned cardiac stem cell graft, a specially designed biodegradable tool to improve heart repair after tissue death. On Nov. 14, the finalists will present their inventions to a panel of judges that includes National Inventors Hall of Fame inductees, science and intellectual property experts from Abbott Laboratories and repre-sentatives of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the Kaufmann Foundation, the presenting sponsors of the competition. The winners will be announced Nov. 15 at the Department of Commerce in Wash-ington, D.C.

Applied Physics Laboratory Michael Buckley, Paulette CampbellBloomberg School of Public Health Tim Parsons, Natalie Wood-WrightCarey Business School Andrew Blumberg, Patrick ErcolanoHomewoodLisa De Nike, Amy Lunday, Dennis O’Shea,Tracey A. Reeves, Phil SneidermanJohns Hopkins MedicineChristen Brownlee, Stephanie Desmon, Neil A. Grauer, Audrey Huang, John Lazarou, David March, Vanessa McMains, Ekaterina 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

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 Photography

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 Lauren Custer

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 Communications and Public Affairs, Suite 540, 901 S. Bond St., Baltimore, MD 21231, in cooperation with all university divisions. Subscriptions are $26 per year. Deadline for calendar items, notices and classifieds (free to JHU faculty, staff and students) is noon Monday, one week prior to publica-tion date.

Phone: 443-287-9900Fax: 443-287-9920General e-mail: [email protected] e-mail: [email protected] the Web: gazette.jhu.edu

Paid advertising, which does not repre-sent any endorsement by the university, is handled by the Gazelle Group at 410-343-3362 or [email protected].

JHU Nobelists seek support for James Webb Telescope

Two Johns Hopkins Nobelists—Adam Riess and Riccardo Giacconi of the Krieger School’s Henry A. Rowland

Department of Physics and Astronomy—participated in a press conference at the Maryland Science Center last week to sup-port funding of the James Webb Space Tele-scope, which is expected to launch in 2018. The occasion was the unveiling of a permanent exhibit about the James Webb, called “the next generation Hubble Space Telescope.” The exhibit was donated to the science center by Northrop Grumman Corp., which is currently building the real thing under contract to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. (A life-size model of the JWST was on display outside the science center for 12 days in October.) Riess pointed out that it was because of the Hubble that his High-z Supernova Research Team was able to make the “astounding dis-covery” that the expansion of the universe was speeding up, due to a “strange and mys-terious” new component called dark energy. “Dark energy comprises 73 percent of the universe and it’s still a giant mystery to us, and we look forward to using the James Webb Space Telescope to finish the job and to understand the nature of this dark energy,” he said, specifically thanking U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski for her steadfast support of the Hubble and now, the James Webb. Speaking at the press conference, Mikul-ski said she expects that the Senate will pass a budget Nov. 1 that includes $500 million to support the new infrared telescope, which will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. It will allow astronomers to observe the universe’s most distant objects and will provide images of the first galaxies ever formed.

Holiday turkey program aims to feed 100 needy families

In honor of the 10th anniversary of Ver-non Rice’s death, the Office of Work, Life and Engagement aims to provide

food baskets to 100 families through its annual Vernon Rice Memorial Holiday Tur-key Program. All members of the Johns Hopkins community are invited to donate $25 to purchase a food basket of a fresh turkey and vegetables from local and free-range farms. St. Anthony of Padua Church will deliver the baskets directly to needy families for the Thanksgiving and December holidays. To participate in the program, go to hopkinsworklife.org/community/turkey.html or call Brandi Monroe-Payton at 443-997-0338. Payment must be received by Nov. 10 to assist families for Thanksgiving and by Dec. 9 for the December holidays.

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October 31, 2011 • THE GAZETTE 3

Ted Dawson, scientific director of the Institute for Cell Engineering, has been appointed as the institute’s

director. He succeeds Chi Van Dang, ICE’s inaugural director, who became head of the University of Pennsylvania’s cancer center. In a letter announcing Dawson’s appoint-ment to colleagues, Edward D. Miller, the Frances Watt Baker, M.D., and Lenox D. Baker Jr., M.D., Dean of the Medical Faculty and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, said, “As ICE’s scientific director for the last year and a half, Ted already has been instrumen-tal in energizing the institute’s extensive research programs. His considerable experi-ence and leadership will serve it well, as he and his colleagues work to understand how the fate of cellular development is deter-mined; to harness that information to select, modify and reprogram human cells; and to develop clinical approaches to combat the diseases that arise when cell functioning goes awry.” Dawson received his medical degree and doctorate in pharmacology from the Uni-versity of Utah and completed his neurology residency at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1990, he came to Johns Hopkins for a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience with Sol Snyder, University Distinguished Service Professor of Neuroscience, Phar-macology and Psychiatry in the School of

Medicine. He soon joined the faculty and in 2004 was named the inaugural Leonard and Madlyn Abramson Professor of Neurode-generative Diseases. He is now the director of the Morris K. Udall Parkinson’s Disease Research Center of Excellence, as well as a professor of neurology and neuroscience. “Along with his wife, fellow neuroscien-tist Valina Dawson, founding director of the Neuroregeneration Program in ICE, Ted has achieved significant research break-throughs in the neurobiology of disease and the molecular mechanisms of neuro-degeneration,” Miller said. “The Dawsons’ important work has included discoveries revealing how the molecules nitric oxide and poly (ADP-ribose) within cells become ‘messengers of death,’ playing a prominent role in killing cells and nerves in the brain, heart and other organs during strokes, heart attacks and in the progress of such neuro-degenerative diseases as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. “These seminal findings in the molecu-lar mechanisms of neurodegeneration, enhanced through subsequent research by the Dawsons, have led to drugs—now being tested in clinical trials—that would target these molecules, block their operation and prevent the progressive destruction of cells and nerves in a variety of devastating neuro-degenerative illnesses,” he said.

Ted Dawson named director of the Institute for Cell Engineering

A P P O I N T M E N T

B y J i m S c h n a B e l


Delivering anticancer drugs into breast ducts via the nipple is highly effective in animal models of early

breast cancer, and has no major side effects in human patients, according to a report by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers in Science Translational Medicine on Oct. 26. The results of the study are expected to lead to more-advanced clinical trials of so-called intraductal treatment for early breast cancer. “Our results support the theory that by treating the breast tissue directly we can reach a much more potent drug con-centration where it is needed, with far fewer adverse effects on tissues outside the breasts,” said oncologist Vered Stearns, who supervised the clinical part of the study. Cancer biologist Saraswati Sukumar, who supervised the animal tests, said, “This has been a classic translational medicine col-laboration between a bench researcher and a clinician scientist.” Stearns, who holds the Breast Cancer Research Chair in Oncology, and Suku-mar, the Barbara B. Rubenstein Professor of Oncology, are co-directors of the Breast Can-cer Program at the Kimmel Cancer Center. Sukumar began intraductal research more than a decade ago, reasoning that because most breast cancers originate from cells lin-

ing the milk ducts, early or preventive thera-pies should be delivered directly to the ducts via the nipple rather than intravenously. In 2006, in the journal Cancer Research, Sukumar and her colleagues reported on an initial successful test of the technique using the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin against early ductal breast cancers in rats. For the current study, Stearns set up a small clinical trial to determine the feasi-bility of Sukumar’s technique in 17 breast cancer patients. Starting first with dex-trose—essentially sugar water—and later with escalating doses of the same doxoru-bicin formulation used on Sukumar’s rats—pegylated liposomal doxorubicin, or PLD—she was able to infuse patients’ breast ducts via a small catheter placed into the nipple. The technique wasn’t used in this case to treat cancer; the patients in the study all had established breast tumors and were awaiting mastectomies. But Stearns was able to estab-lish that single doses of PLD to breast ducts caused only mild side effects including slight nipple pain and breast fullness. A comparison of 12 patients receiving PLD intraductally and three patients treated with PLD by the standard intravenous route also was revealing, Stearns said. “Intraductal delivery of PLD resulted in much higher concentration in the breast compared to the circulation, whereas in the women with intravenous doses, we saw relatively high concentrations in the blood but very little, if any, in the breast,” she noted.

Through-the-nipple breast cancer therapy shows promise In the animal portion of the study, Suku-mar’s lab examined the intraductal effective-ness of four standard anticancer drugs, 5-flu-orouracil or 5FU, carboplatin, methotrexate and paclitaxel, all compared with PLD. Of these drugs, intraductal 5FU prevented the most cancers compared to no drug or to intravenous delivery. It also shrank estab-lished breast tumors with striking effective-ness, completely eliminating them in 10 of 14 treated rats, she said. “As both a preven-tive and a therapy, 5FU worked extremely well in these tests,” Sukumar said. It has the additional advantage, she noted, of sparing breast ducts the kind of damage caused by PLD, which at therapeutic doses can destroy large parts of the ductal lining. But perhaps the most intriguing outcome of these tests, she said, was that preventive treatment of only four mammary glands in rats—which have a total of 12—showed a strong effect in preventing tumors in the untreated glands as well. “We think that 5FU, at the high concentration achieved with intraductal delivery, elicits an immune response that can suppress tumor formation in the other ducts,” Sukumar said. “This is an attractive feature because some breast ducts in women are ‘blind ducts’ that are uncon-nected to the nipple and, therefore, unreach-able directly with intraductal therapy.” Sukumar and Stearns say that the next step is to set up a further clinical study with 5FU, based on the new findings. The goal is to use intraductal therapy to suppress

tumors in patients with a high genetic risk for breast cancer or premalignant lesions in their breast ducts. “In principle, one could do such a procedure every 10 years or so to keep one’s breasts tumor-free, as an alterna-tive to having the breasts removed,” Suku-mar said. The study was funded by the National Cancer Institute, Windy Hill Medical Cen-ter, Mary Kay Ash Foundation and Susan Love Research Foundation. Contributors to the study, in addition to Sukumar and Stearns, were co–first author Tsuyoshi Mori, currently at the Shiga Insti-tute of Medical Science in Japan; and Lisa K. Jacobs, Nagi F. Khouri, Edward Gabriel-son, Takahiro Yoshida, Scott L. Kominsky, David L. Huso, Stacie Jeter, Penny Powers, Karineh Tarpinian, Regina J. Brown, Julie R. Lange, Michelle A. Rudek, Zhe Zhang and Theodore N. Tsangaris, all of Johns Hopkins.

Related websitesJohns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center: www.hopkinskimmelcancercenter .org

Breast Cancer Program at Johns Hopkins: www.hopkinsbreastcenter.org

B y S a r a h l e Wi n


While most studies have concluded that a cold climate led to the short lower legs typical of Nean-

dertals, researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that lower-leg lengths shorter than the typical modern human’s let them move more efficiently over the mountainous ter-rain where they lived. The findings reveal a broader trend relating shorter lower-leg length to mountainous environments that may help explain the limb proportions of many different animals. Their research was published online by the American Journal of Physical Anthropol-ogy and will appear in print in the journal’s November issue. “Studies looking at limb length have always concluded that a shorter limb, includ-ing in Neandertals, leads to less efficiency of movement because they had to take more steps to go a given distance,” said lead author Ryan Higgins, a graduate student in the Johns Hopkins Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution. “But the other studies only looked at flat land. Our study suggests that the Neandertals’ steps were not less efficient than modern humans’ in the sloped, mountainous environment where they lived.” Neandertals, who lived from 40,000 to

200,000 years ago in Europe and in Western Asia, mostly during very cold periods, had a smaller stature and shorter lower-leg lengths than modern humans do. Because mammals in cold areas tend to be more compact, with a smaller surface area, scientists have con-cluded that it was the region’s temperature that led to the Neandertals’ truncated limbs compared to those of modern humans, who live in a warmer environment overall. Higgins’ work, however, adds a twist to this story. Using a mathematical model relating leg proportions to angle of ascent on hills, he has calculated that Neandertals on a sloped terrain would have held an advantage while moving compared to their long-legged cousins, the modern humans. Because the area that Neandertals inhabited was more mountainous than where modern humans tend to live, the researchers say that this assessment paints a more accurate picture of the Neandertals’ efficiency of movement as compared to humans. “Their short lower-leg lengths actually made the Neandertals more adept at walking on hills,” Higgins said. But the researchers didn’t stop there. “In our field, if you want to prove an adaptation to the environment, like mountains leading to shorter leg lengths, you can’t just look at one species; you have to look at many spe-cies in the same situation, and see the same pattern happening over and over again,” Higgins said. “We needed to look at other animals with similar leg construction that existed in both flat and mountainous areas, as Neandertals and humans did, to see if ani-mals tended to have shorter lower leg length in the mountains.” The researchers decided to study differ-ent types of bovids—a group of mammals that includes gazelles, antelopes, goats and sheep—since these animals live in warm and cold environments on both flat and hilly terrain. The group took data from the litera-ture on bovid leg bones and found that they fit the pattern: Mountainous bovids, such as sheep and mountain goats, overall had shorter lower leg bones than their relatives on flat land, such as antelopes and gazelles, even when they lived in the same climates. Investigating closely related bovids brought this trend into even sharper relief. Most gazelles live on flat land, and the one mountainous gazelle species examined had

Mountains solve the mysteries of short-legged Neandertalsrelatively shorter lower legs, despite shar-ing the same climate. Also, among caprids (goats and sheep), which mostly live on mountains, the one flat-land member of the group exhibited relatively longer lower legs than all the others. “Biologists have Bergman’s and Allen’s rules, which predict reduced surface area to body size and shorter limbs in colder envi-ronments,” Higgins said. “Our evidence sug-gests that we can also predict certain limb configurations based on topography. We believe adding the topic of terrain to ongo-

ing discussions about limb proportions will allow us to better refine our understanding of how living species adapt to their environ-ments. This improved understanding will help us better interpret the characteristics of many fossil species, not just Neandertals.” Funding for this research was provided by the Johns Hopkins Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution. This study was completed by Higgins and Christopher B. Ruff, also of the Johns Hop-kins Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution.

Related websitesCenter for functional anatomy and evolution: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/fae

ryan Higgins: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/fae/ RWH.htm

Christopher ruff: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/fae/ CBR.htm

‘american Journal of Physical anthropology’: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/ 10.1002/%28ISSN%291096-8644


shovels and cultivators, to be shared among the garden users. Karen Geary, senior property manager with the Office of Facilities Management, said that her office was happy to work with this group of motivated students on such a worthwhile project. “And we think this is a great space. It’s large and visible, with direct access to water and 24-hour security,” Geary said. “The stu-dents view this as a long-term, viable project that can continue well after they graduate.” Santo said that she hopes the garden can create a long-lasting community of stu-dents, staff, faculty and neighborhood mem-bers devoted to learning about and growing healthy food together. “The idea is that it won’t be just a few individuals bearing the weight of the gar-dening but really a cooperative effort to show that we all care about our food and where it comes from,” Santo said. Johns Hopkins also has partnered with the University of Maryland Extension’s mas-ter gardener program to provide training and green tips. The students will update progress on the garden at jhucommunitygarden.wordpress .com. For more information, email jhucommgarden@ gmail.com.

Continued from page 1

Garden

The students viewed the loss as an oppor-tunity to create a bigger garden that could serve as a model for urban gardening and sustainable agriculture for both the commu-nity and Johns Hopkins affiliates. The hunt for a new site began. Real Food Hopkins, working with the university’s Office of Facilities Management, identified a roughly 4,000-square-foot trian-gular patch of grass adjacent to the running track at Johns Hopkins at Eastern. The effort received additional support from the university’s Sustainability Office, the Cen-ter for Social Concern, the Office of Govern-ment and Community Affairs, and Campus Kitchen at Johns Hopkins University. Students, staff and faculty will be able to sign up to garden their own individual plots or to work with a Waverly neighborhood community group, beginning next spring. The site offers space for more than 50 five-by-eight-foot plots, and student leaders anticipate that 15 to 20 will be established and actively maintained in the first growing season.

To promote the new endeavor, a town hall meeting will be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 3, in the Training and Development room at Johns Hopkins at Eastern. Participants can learn about the new community garden, sign up for garden plots, help name the garden and offer input on its future use. Wei-ting Chen, a fourth-year doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and one of the garden’s champions, said that the students wanted Johns Hopkins to participate in the growing sustainable food production movement, and strengthen the university’s relationship with residents and community organizations in the Waverly neighborhood. “We can see people from Johns Hopkins working side by side with residents in the garden,” she said. “The garden has an edu-cational component, too, where people can learn about food production and sustainabil-ity.” Joanna Calabrese, a sustainability outreach coordinator for Johns Hopkins, said that the garden promises great success, thanks to the students’ vision and hard work. “The student leaders of this project have demonstrated the potential for young lead-ers. They realized the potential of the urban agriculture movement to vital-

G

ize and strengthen our community,” she said. “Johns Hopkins University has the resources and opportunity to play a unique and meaningful role in Baltimore City’s own movement. Both JHU and Waverly community gardeners will benefit from greater access to healthy, nutritious food.” In addition to Chen, the student leaders of the community garden are Raychel Santo, a sophomore public health studies major and president of Real Food Hopkins; Audrey Swanenberg, a senior sociology major; and freshman Anna Belous. Chen said that the group expects the gar-den’s users to plant squash, tomatoes, herbs, beans and other vegetables. The students have already planted some garlic and peren-nial flowers, and expect to plant some fruit trees. The plot managers can keep what they produce as well as donate a portion of the crops to Campus Kitchen at Johns Hopkins, which is dedicated to using surplus food to provide balanced and nutritious meals for hungry men, women and children in the Baltimore area. The Office of Facilities Management has agreed to provide further assistance in the form of fencing, landscaping and the creation of the raised beds. Facilities and the students will also secure tools, such as

Area above jawbone, below cheekbone, proves handy new route to skull base

B y c h r i S t e n B r o Wn l e e


A technique developed by Johns Hop-kins surgeons is providing a new route to get to and remove tumors

buried at the base of the skull: through the natural hole behind the molars, above the jawbone and beneath the cheekbone. In a report detailing the novel surgery, published in the October issue of The Laryn-goscope, the surgeons say that the procedure, already performed in seven patients, yields faster recovery and fewer complications than traditional approaches. And, because the incisions are made inside the cheek, there are no visible scars.

Kofi Boahene, an assistant professor of facial plastic and reconstructive surgery and of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, says that the idea for the new approach came to him when a 20-year-old female patient previously treated for a brain tumor developed a new tumor deep in the skull base. Traditional surgeries to remove skull-base tumors require incisions through the face and also bone removal, which can some-times be disfiguring. Additionally, these operations can harm facial nerves, leading to paralysis that affects facial expressions, and require days or weeks of hospitalization and recovery. Boahene said he was gazing at a skull model in his office, considering options to spare his patient from another traditional surgery. “I looked at the ‘window’ that already exists in the skull, above the jawbone and below the cheekbone, and real-ized this was an access route not previously recognized for this kind of surgery,” he said.

‘Scarless’ surgery takes out tumors through natural skull opening Knowing there was always the option of switching to the traditional approach while trying the new one, Boahene and his col-leagues performed the new procedure on his patient last year. The expected surgery time shrank from six hours to two. Additionally, the patient was able to leave the hospital the next day and return to college, with no visible evidence that she had had surgery. The report in The Laryngoscope describes details of the surgeries on three of the seven patients Boahene and his colleagues have thus far treated with the new technique. Besides benefits for patients, he and his colleagues note, the new procedure is sig-nificantly less complicated for surgeons to perform, provides excellent visualization of the skull-base area and could potentially save health care dollars, due to patients’ shorter hospital stays. Not all patients are candidates for this procedure, Boahene cautioned. It isn’t an option for those with very large skull-base tumors or for those with tumors that wrap

around blood vessels. For these patients, traditional skull-base surgery is still the best choice, he said. In the future, he and his colleagues plan to try the new procedure using a surgical robot, which could provide even better visualization for surgeons and further reduce chances of complications for patients.

Related websitesKofi Boahene: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ facial_plastic_reconstructive_ surgery/our_team/our_surgeons/ kofi_boahene.html

otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery at Johns Hopkins: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ otolaryngology

Study of ‘magic mush-rooms’ found participants displayed more ‘openness’

B y S t e p h a n i e D e S m o n


A single high dose of the hallu-cinogen psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called “magic

mushrooms,” was enough to bring about a measurable personality change lasting at least a year in nearly 60 percent of the 51 participants in a new study, according to the Johns Hopkins researchers who conducted it. Lasting change was found in the part of the personality known as openness, which includes traits related to imagina-tion, aesthetics, feelings, abstract ideas and general broad-mindedness. Changes in these traits, measured on a widely used and scientifically validated personality inventory, were larger in magnitude than changes typically observed in healthy adults over decades of life experiences, the scientists say. Researchers in the field say that after the age of 30, personality doesn’t usually change significantly.

”Normally, if anything, openness tends to decrease as people get older,” said study leader Roland R. Griffiths, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medi-cine. The research, approved by a Johns Hop-kins institutional review board, was funded in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and published Sept. 29 in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. The study participants completed two to five eight-hour drug sessions, with con-secutive sessions separated by at least three weeks. Participants were informed that they would receive a “moderate or high dose” of psilocybin during one of their drug sessions, but neither they nor the session monitors knew when. During each session, participants were encouraged to lie down on a couch, use an eye mask to block external visual distrac-tion, wear headphones through which music was played and focus their attention on their inner experiences. Personality was assessed at screening, one to two months after each drug session and approximately 14 months after the last drug session. Griffiths says he believes that the personality changes found in this study are likely permanent since they were sustained by more than a year by many participants.

One dose of hallucinogen may create lasting personality changes Nearly all the participants in the new study considered themselves spiritually active (participating regularly in religious services, prayer or meditation). More than half had postgraduate degrees. Volunteers were considered to be psychologically healthy, and the sessions with the oth-erwise illegal hallucinogen were closely monitored. “We don’t know whether the findings can be generalized to the larger population,” Griffiths said. As a word of caution, Griffiths notes that some of the study participants reported strong fear or anxiety for a portion of their daylong psilocybin sessions, although none reported any lingering harmful effects. He warns, however, that if hallucinogens are used in less well–supervised settings, the possible fear or anxiety responses could lead to harmful behaviors. Griffiths says that lasting personality change is rarely looked at as a function of a single discrete experience in the labora-tory. In the study, the change occurred specifically in those volunteers who had undergone a “mystical experience,” as vali-dated on a questionnaire developed by early hallucinogen researchers and refined by Griffiths for use at Johns Hopkins. He defines “mystical experience” as, among other things, “a sense of interconnected-

ness with all people and things accom-panied by a sense of sacredness and reverence.” Personality was measured on a widely used and scientifically validated per-sonality inventory, which covers open-ness and the other four broad domains that psychologists consider the makeup of personality: neuroticism, extrover-sion, agreeableness and conscientious-ness. Only openness changed during the course of the study. Griffiths says he believes that psilo-cybin may have therapeutic uses. He is currently studying whether the hal-lucinogen has a use in helping cancer patients handle the depression and anxi-ety that comes along with a diagnosis, and whether it can help longtime ciga-rette smokers overcome their addiction. “There may be applications for this we can’t even imagine at this point,” he said. “It certainly deserves to be systematically studied.” This study was funded by the Coun-cil on Spiritual Practices, the Heffter Research Institute and the Betsy Gordon Foundation, as well as the National Insti-tute on Drug Abuse. Other Johns Hopkins authors of the study are Matthew W. Johnson and Kath-erine A. MacLean.


B y m a r y a l i c e y a k u t c h i k


A study involving more than 200,000 people worldwide has identified 29 DNA sequence variations in loca-

tions across the human genome that influ-ence blood pressure. These genes, whose sequence changes are associated with altera-tions in blood pressure and are linked to heart disease and stroke, were found with the help of decades’ worth of population data that were pooled and analyzed by a large international consortium, including Johns Hopkins researchers. Among the findings was evidence that the same common genetic variants associ-ated with hypertension in European popula-tions also are frequently found in individuals of Asian and African ancestry, according to the report that appears Sept. 11 in Nature. “A genetic risk score that adds up the effects of all of these variants shows that the

more of these variants an individual has, the greater are his or her chances of having hypertension, left ventricular wall thickness, stroke and coronary artery disease,” said Aravinda Chakravarti, a professor of medi-cine, pediatrics, and molecular biology and genetics at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins, and one of the lead authors. The individuals whose genomes were ana-lyzed for this study had had their blood pressures recorded when they entered other long-term cardiovascular research studies, and scientists used these measures to assess the predictive value of the genes and blood pressures in terms of the subjects’ current cardiovascular status. This genomewide association study focused on systolic and diastolic blood pres-sures, measures of the maximum and mini-mum pressures exerted on the arteries. How-ever, in a related genomewide investigation reported Sept. 11 in Nature Genetics, some of the same scientists found an additional

Genomewide hunts reveal new regulators of blood pressuresix locations across the genome where vari-ants affect blood pressure by focusing on two other relevant measures: pulse pressure (the difference between systolic and diastolic blood pressure) and mean arterial pressure (a weighted average of systolic and diastolic blood pressure). The group conducted a genomewide association meta-analysis of pulse pressure and mean arterial pressure in 74,064 individuals of European ancestry from 35 studies and then followed up the results in 48,607 additional individuals. “It’s like using four different cops to find the same culprit,” Chakravarti said. “The more ways we search for blood pressure genes, the better our ability to understand hyperten-sion, whose effects are not uni-causal.” For the billion-plus people worldwide with hypertension, even small elevations in blood pressure are associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Although it’s generally known that hypertension has a familial component, the genetic regulatory mechanisms of blood pressure have been challenging to pin down so far, Chakravarti says, citing similar genetic studies three years ago that failed to detect any genes. He credits the recent spate of genetic discover-ies—more than 300 genes for cardiovascular diseases have been identified in just the last few years—to the collective analyses of long-term prospective research efforts such as the pioneering Framingham Heart Study, begun in 1948; the Cardiovascular Health Study, started in 1989; and the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study, started in 1987. “Too often, people look at these studies that have a long provenance and won-der what is it doing for them today,” said Chakravarti, who compares the studies to a retirement account. “Researchers visit them time and time again. Without them, this feat of genetic studies would be impossible.” Each genomewide association study, often referred to as GWAS, reported what effects were observed at which locations on

the genome in a scan of single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, throughout the genome. SNPs, pronounced “snips,” are sites where a single letter in the DNA code is variable between humans. “Your blood pressure is a function of these genes we just identified as well as perhaps a hundred others we haven’t found yet,” Chakravarti said. “By revealing the genetic architecture of blood pressure, both stud-ies will help us to understand the biology of cardiovascular diseases and stroke and, eventually, may lead to better therapies.” Support for the international multi-insti-tutional project came from many funding mechanisms, including the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and European and private funding agencies. More than 230 scientists contributed to the Nature study; Chakravarti is a corre-sponding author. The lead author is Georg B. Ehret, also of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins. Other Johns Hopkins authors are Vasyl Pihur, Josef Coresh, Judith A. Hoff-man-Bolton, Linda Kao, Anna Kottgen and J.Hunter Young. In addition to Chakravarti, Johns Hop-kins scientists who contributed to the Nature Genetics study are Ehret and Pihur.

Related websitesChakravarti lab: chakravarti.igm.jhmi.edu/ AravindaChakravartiLab/Home .html

‘Nature’: www.nature.com/nature/index .html

‘Nature Genetics’: www.nature.com/ng/index.html

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


Medical imaging experts at Johns Hopkins have reviewed the patient records of 302 men and women

who had a much-needed X-ray of the blood vessels near the spinal cord and found that the procedure, often feared for possible com-plications of stroke and kidney damage, is safe and effective. Reporting in the journal Neurology online Sept. 14, the Johns Hopkins researchers found that none of the study participants, all of whom underwent a spinal digital subtrac-tion angiography, or SpDSA, at The Johns Hopkins Hospital between 2000 and 2010, had suffered either a stroke or kidney dam-age as a result of the procedure, considered the “gold standard” test for distinguishing among many types of vascular disorders near the spine. These include strokes, hemato-mas, aneurysms, fistulas and tumors. “Patients and their physicians can now look with confidence to our study and see for themselves the real as opposed to per-ceived risks and complications from spinal angiography,” said study senior investigator and interventional neuroradiologist Philippe Gailloud. ”Advances in the procedure have made it much safer today than before, and neurologists and patients really should con-sider this valuable diagnostic tool based on the actual medical evidence and not on what-ever unsubstantiated rumors they might hear secondhand or read on the Internet,” said Gailloud, an associate professor in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Gailloud says that reports of stroke and kid-ney damage had been rather high, in as many as 3 percent of people, in the 1970s, when the procedure was introduced. At that time, preparing patients for testing and injecting a dye to make the blood vessels more visible often took hours instead of the half-hour it takes today, raising the chances that a clot could dislodge in the blood vessels and cause a stroke. The earlier process also used more than twice as much of the potentially toxic contrast agent than is needed today. Another key finding in the latest study was that spinal angiography could accurately rule out suspected cases of spinal inflam-mation, a condition known as transverse myelitis. Fourteen of 45 patients diagnosed and treated with steroids or other immune-suppressing drugs for transverse myelitis were later confirmed by SpDSA to have a vascular malformation instead. All of these patients were successfully treated for their actual spinal problem, and none of them suffered any complications as a result.

According to Gailloud, who is also director of Interventional Neuroradiology at Johns Hopkins, this finding shows physicians that anyone who is diagnosed with transverse myelitis and who does not show improve-ment after drug treatment but is still likely suffering from a spinal problem should con-sider having an SpDSA to either verify the original diagnosis or determine if it is actually a vascular malformation. The two conditions have similar symptoms, he says, with people often complaining of a weakening in the legs, even temporary paralysis; sudden and uncon-trolled urination; and back pain. Lead study investigator James Chen, a Johns Hopkins medical student, began the study with encouragement from experts at the Johns Hopkins Transverse Myelitis Center after noticing reluctance by other specialists and patients to use spinal angiog-raphy because they believed the procedure to be too dangerous, despite growing accep-tance of its efficacy. “To counter medical rumor and historical perception, we simply had to put some current numbers on its safety and risk,” said Chen, who is also a Doris Duke Charitable Foundation research fellow in interventional neuroradiology at Johns Hopkins. Gailloud and Chen have already begun the next phase of their research, a prospec-tive study to monitor people for any pos-sible complications months or even years after having an SpDSA. Initial results are expected in 2012. In the SpDSA procedure, a catheter tube is inserted into the larger blood vessels near the groin and gently threaded, one by one, into each of the major arteries branching from the aorta to the spine. Dye is released into each artery to help form multiple images of each artery, as taken by X-ray. The test is usually performed to specifically identify the source of the vascular problem after an MRI has ruled out any other physical disorders to the spine. Funding support for this study was pro-vided by The Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Related websitesPhilippe Gailloud: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ interventional_neuroradiology/ about_us/philippe_gailloud_ endovascular_interventional.html

The Transverse Myelitis Center at Johns Hopkins: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ neurology_neurosurgery/specialty_ areas/transverse_myelitis

Feared spinal X-ray found to be safe, Johns Hopkins study shows


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CSOS

in research-based school improvement pro-vides a wonderful overlap for the work that we do.” Katherine Newman, the James B. Knapp Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, said that the new arrangement recognizes that the mission of the CSOS is more closely aligned to that of the School of Education. “In collaboration with the vice deans and our colleagues throughout the school, we have been evaluating every enterprise the school supports, with an eye toward contin-ued excellence and appropriate alignment with a distinguished program of scholarship and instruction,” Newman said. “CSOS is an important institution and a national treasure in the field of school reform. As an applied research and intervention organiza-tion, it shares with our colleagues in the School of Education a mission dedicated to reform and rigorous evaluation.” The move gives the School of Education direct responsibility for four Baltimore City schools. The School of Education, in partner-ship with Morgan State University’s School of Education and Urban Studies, assumed operating responsibilities for the East Balti-more Community School on Aug. 8. Johns Hopkins took over the day-to-day operation of the school through a contract with the school’s board. This fall, the school began its third year, with approximately 260 students in kinder-garten and first, second, third, sixth and sev-enth grades. Grades four, five and eight will be added incrementally. The school, tem-porarily located at 1101 N. Wolfe St. and officially a charter school of the Baltimore City Public School System, was previously known as the Elmer Henderson Elementary School. CSOS operates the William C. March Middle School, the Baltimore Civitas

School (grades 6–12) and the Baltimore Talent Development High School. Both the Baltimore Civitas School and Baltimore Talent Development High School were cre-ated by CSOS. The William C. March Mid-dle School was an existing school for which CSOS assumed operation in July 2010. Andrews said that the merger with CSOS brings a “critical mass” of schools under the School of Education umbrella that could, in the near future, justify an administrative support structure to help with day-to-day operations and long-term planning at these four sites. “We are now officially in the business of running schools,” Andrews said. “Having four certainly puts us out there.” CSOS was established in 1966 as an edu-cational research and development center at The Johns Hopkins University. The center has a 120-person staff of full-time soci-ologists, psychologists, social psychologists and educators who conduct programmatic research to improve the education system, as well as full-time support staff engaged in developing curricula and providing techni-cal assistance to help schools use the center’s research. The center currently includes the Center on School, Family and Community Partnerships, and the Everyone Graduates Center. Since the founding of the center, its mission has been to study how changes in the organization of schools can make them more effective for all students in promoting academic achievement, development of potential and eventual career success. The center’s stated belief is that changes in the structure of a learning environment can produce positive results in the attitudes, behaviors and accomplishments of students and faculty. CSOS staff, for example, look to develop learning environments that minimize stu-dent apathy or disruption, and examine how to connect schools with families and com-munities. The center’s middle and high school stud-ies focus on the development, evaluation and dissemination of its Talent Development secondary school model, which includes all

elements of curricular and social organiza-tion, as well as professional development and specific transitional courses in math and English. Other studies at the center focus on dropout prevention, content literacy, the effects of coaching on literacy instruction and effective algebra instruction. The center’s researchers publish regularly in leading social science journals and pres-ent their findings at annual conferences such as those of the American Educational Research Association, American Sociologi-cal Association and American Psychological Association. Success for All, a comprehensive restruc-turing program for elementary schools, with an emphasis on literacy skills, was devel-oped at CSOS by School of Education professors Robert Slavin and Nancy Mad-den. Success for All is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as one of the most effective evidence-based programs available to improve student performance. The whole-school reform program is cur-rently being used in 1,000 schools and has received additional funding to nearly dou-ble that number over the next three to five years. Andrews said that CSOS’s long list of accomplishments will certainly help in the recruitment area. “This merger will help as we look to expand our faculty and attract world-class colleagues,” he said. McPartland said that CSOS looks forward to partnering with the School of Educa-tion and its graduate program in education research. “We want to help them develop the next generation of education researchers with a scientific base in school reform,” he said. “We welcome any involvement with gradu-ate training.” CSOS receives federal funding for its work, supplemented by grants and contracts from both public and private sources. Its offices are at 2701 N. Charles St., a block south of the Johns Hopkins Education Building. For more information on CSOS, go to www .jhucsos.org.

G


B y m a r i a B l a c k B u r n

Center for Talented Youth

Cogito.org, a website and online com-munity for gifted math and science students, won the prestigious Sci-

ence Prize for Online Resources in Educa-tion (SPORE) Oct. 27 in recognition of its success at bringing students from all over the world together to “geek out” about a wealth of topics ranging from extrasolar planets to epigenetics. Cogito was developed by the Johns Hop-kins Center for Talented Youth with help from eight partner organizations serving gifted pre-college students, and generous support from the John Templeton Founda-tion. Launched in 2006, the site includes profiles of young scientists, interviews with guest experts from all fields of science and math, blogs and a community section for Cogito members. Cogito is targeted to top students between the ages of 13 and 18. “We’re proud of Cogito for so many rea-sons,” said Patricia Wallace, CTY’s senior director of information technology and CTYOnline. “The site brings these very bright students together to interact with one another and with experts who are on the cutting edge of scientific discovery.” The award, which recognizes the best Internet resources in science education, is presented by Science magazine and its publisher, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, both highly regarded science resources. Past winners include MIT Open Courseware, a site that makes teaching materials used in MIT undergraduate and graduate courses avail-

able on the Web for use by the general pub-lic, and Science Buddies, a site that assists K-12 students and parents with science fair ideas and projects. AAAS invited the Cogito team to contribute an essay about the site, and the article appears in the Oct. 28 issue of Science. What’s distinctive about the free site, according to Cogito’s managing editor, Kristi Birch, is how it creates community among students who might not otherwise have a way to share with their peers their love of learning. “It’s not always cool to be smart, and it may not be socially acceptable at school for these students to have these kinds of conversations about math and science at such high levels,” Birch said. “Cogito is the one place you can go to get that social and intellectual connection.” For student Philip Streich, who was lauded by Discover magazine in 2008 as one of the top five young scientists under 20, Cogito helped nurture his early interest in science. “Living on a farm in rural Wiscon-sin, I’d had no opportunity to hear about and communicate with other kids my age who were as passionate as I was about science,” he said. “Cogito brought me into a scientific community that I would otherwise never have had a chance to be part of. It motivated me to start doing research myself.” Streich isn’t the only student who feels this way about the online community, says Science editorial fellow Melissa McCartney. “There is a common theme in all of [the users’] feedback: Student participation in Cogito resulted in a demystification of sci-entists and what they do, as well as increased ability for students to picture themselves doing research alongside them someday.”

CTY site for gifted math, science students wins ‘Science’ top honor K U D O S

Cogito showcases news by and about pre-college students from all over the world. Clicking on a dot on an interactive map brings up a list of articles related to young scientists in that location. In this screenshot, the articles by and about young scien-tists in Malaysia appear, as well as a discussion forum students had with a Malaysian medical researcher.

10/26/11 11:16 AMCogito - Young Scientists - Young Scientists Article Map

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APL software tool will give emergency managersmore flexibility and time

B y G e o f f B r o Wn

Applied Physics Laboratory

Imagine trying to plan for the evacua-tion of a populated coastal area with-out a major bridge to safety, or having to adjust an evacuation if a wildfire suddenly rendered an interstate high-

way unusable. State and local emergency management agencies need accurate, reli-able evacuation plans covering these differ-ent scenarios, but creating those plans often requires complex and expensive study results that can’t rapidly be updated to reflect developing situations. A new project from the National Secu-rity Technology Department at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory—the Real-Time Evacuation Planning Model (or RtePM, pronounced “route PM”)—is gaining interest from emergency managers because it can provide a fast, easy way to conduct analyses that result in better, more accurate plans. “We were tasked by the Department of Homeland Security in 2009 to find out what the emergency management community in the southeastern U.S. [an area frequently hit by hurricanes] wanted in terms of technol-ogy,” explained program manager D.J. Wad-dell, of the Homeland Protection Business Area, about the project’s beginnings. The NSTD team learned that the most requested capability was the ability to “draw an area on a map and tell me how long it will take to evacuate the people from there.” To simplify that task into a stand-alone and functioning model, Waddell said, “we had to constrain this for populations using pas-senger vehicles,” which is the primary way that Americans evacuate most areas during a disaster.

The heart of the geographic information system–based RtePM is the Dynamic Clear-ance Time Calculator, which uses three sets of data to estimate how an evacuation plan will unfold. Those three data sets—roadway capacity, demographic and density infor-mation, and human behavior (the least-predictable variable)—are combined into an easy-to-use graphical interface that requires little user training and offers enormous flex-ibility. New simulations and analyses can be achieved by simply drawing a line around an area, selecting from variables such as side streets and specific neighborhoods, and rerunning the calculator. For a small geographic area, performing a new simulation in RtePM will be finished in the time it takes to refresh the screen; a simu-lation for a densely populated area can take up to two hours. “We ran a large scenario for a Category 4 hurricane in the Houston/Galveston, Texas, area,” Waddell said, “with a population of 1.6 million, and 922,000 of them evacuating, in a bit under two hours.” Similar results were obtained for the Hamp-

Building better evacuation plans for U.S. municipalities

ton Roads region of Virginia. (For the largest metropolitan areas, Waddell said that the team would need to include models of public transportation and pedestrian evacuations.) While the system is not yet fully real-time, owing in part to a dearth of real-time traffic-monitoring data, RtePM can generate new simulations quickly enough to be effec-tive in most cases, and has drawn praise from evacuation analysts for its current capabili-ties. Waddell said that having veteran emer-gency managers, including Russ Strickland, a former senior official at the Maryland Emergency Management Agency, work side by side with the project’s technical lead, Dave George, helped RtePM gain quick currency with the evacuation community. “We pair subject matter experts with our technical leads,” Waddell said, “and it helps us cut through miscommunication early on. We can focus on what the planners need, not in terms of technology but in terms of functionality.” RtePM was originally designed for the

southeastern United States, but it was soon getting demonstration requests from across the country, including San Diego, where wildfires threaten from June through Octo-ber. “In San Diego, we learned that we needed to fine-tune which roads get included in the simulation for a locality,” Waddell said. “Ordinarily, we leave off smaller side roads because they don’t connect to major arteries. In San Diego, because of the terrain, they’re the only roads that do connect to those arteries. “Another regional difference in San Diego is that, understandably, people won’t leave their horses behind in a wildfire,” Waddell continued. “During the most recent wildfires there, 20,000 people and 3,000 horses were moved. So we have to account for people going to their horses, and then heading for safety.” Requests for RtePM information and trial use have also come from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Rich-land, Wash., and from planners for Super Bowl XLVI, to be held in February 2012 in Indianapolis. RtePM is still in development for the Department of Homeland Security, with a target delivery date of April 2012 for a transition version that will be able to make the jump to a real-world tool for municipali-ties ranging in size from large cities to rural counties. “The idea is for this to be affordable,” Waddell said. “It’s all done with open source software, it’s Web-based, and it uses road-network data sets that local agen-cies can access for free, thanks to DHS initiatives. Hurricane evacuation planners update their plans every eight years based on data provided by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; with our tool, they could do it monthly, and for less cost. The corps has worked closely with us during RtePM development and testing, and [it has] initi-ated discussions with DHS for long-term maintenance of RtePM.” This article appeared previously in APL News.

Hurricane evacuation planners currently update their plans every eight years, but the new aPL tool would allow them to do it monthly, and for less cost.

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CalendarContinued from page 12

O C T . 3 1 – N O V . 7

Mon. , oct . 31, 4 p.m. “A Cen-tre-Stable Manifold for Schroed-inger’s Equation,” an Analysis/PDE seminar with Marius Beceanu, Rutgers University. Sponsored by Mathematics. 300 Krieger. HW

Mon., oct. 31, 4 p.m. “Dis-ease Modeling and Drug Discov-ery Effort of Neural Crest-Related Diseases With Human Pluripo-tent Stem Cells,” an Institute for Cell Engineering seminar with Gabsang Lee, SoM. G-007 Ross. eB

Mon., oct. 31, 4:30 p.m. “The Nearby Lagrangian Conjecture and Fibered Spectra,” a Topol-ogy seminar with Thomas Kragh, MIT. Sponsored by Mathematics. 308 Krieger. HW

Tues., Nov. 1, noon. “Infor-mation Transduction Capacity of Noisy Biochemical Signaling Networks,” an Institute for Com-putational Medicine seminar with Andre Levchenko, WSE. Hacker-man Auditorium. HW

Tues., Nov. 1, 3 p.m. The M. Gordon Wolman Seminar—“The Next Generation of Drinking Water Disinfection By-Products: Occurrence, Formation and Tox-icity,” with Susan Richardson, Environmental Protection Agen-cy. 234 Ames. HW

Tues., Nov. 1, 4:30 p.m. “Detecting Deceptive Online Reviews,” a Center for Language and Speech Processing seminar with Claire Cardie, Cornell Uni-versity. B17 Hackerman. HW

Tues., Nov. 1, 4:30 p.m. “Tropi-cal Hyperelliptic Curves,” an Algebraic Geometry/Number Theory seminar with Melody Chan, University of California, Berkeley. Sponsored by Mathe-matics. 302 Krieger. HW

Wed., Nov. 2, 8:30 a.m. “Eval-uating Interventions to Reduce

Health Care Disparities in the Era of Comparative Effectiveness Research,” a Center for Clinical Trials seminar with Lisa Cooper, SPH. W2030 SPH. eB

Wed., Nov. 2, 10 a.m. “Bibli-cal Justice,” a Humanities seminar with Regina Schwartz, Northwest-ern University. 208 Gilman. HW

Wed., Nov. 2, 12:15 p.m. The Mental Health Noon Seminar—“Culture and Its Influence on the Epidemiology of Common Men-tal Disorders and on Constructs of Mental Health” with Derrick Silove and Susan Rees, both of the University of New South Wales, Australia (in collaboration with the Behavioral Health Inter-national Student Group). B14B Hampton House. eB

Wed., Nov. 2, 4 p.m. “Antibiotic Resistance: Origins, Mechanisms and Inhibition,” a Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences seminar with Gerry Wright, McMaster University. West Lecture Hall (ground floor), WBSB. eB

Wed., Nov. 2, 4 p.m. “eBird: Statistical Models for Online Crowdsourced Bird Data,” a Bio-statistics seminar with Daniel Fink, Cornell Lab of Ornithology. W2030 SPH. eB

Wed., Nov. 2, 6:30 p.m. Trop-ical Medicine Dinner Club of Baltimore—“Dengue Vaccine Development: How Close Are We?” with Anna Durbin, SPH. $20 for members for the seminar and buffet, $25 for non-members, $15 for residents and fellows and $10 for students. Johns Hopkins Club. HW

Thurs., Nov. 3, 11 a.m. “Pro-tein Biomarker Discovery Driven by Perturbed Cellular Networks,” a Pathology seminar with Ruedi Aebersold, Institute of Molecular Systems Biology. Owens Audito-rium, CRB. eB

Thurs., Nov. 3, noon. The

Bromery Seminar—“Forecasting Fire Activity in Amazonia Using Sea Surface Temperatures” with Douglas Morton, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Sponsored by Earth and Planetary Sciences. Olin Auditorium. HW

Thurs., Nov. 3, noon. Advocacy and Action: Local, State, Region-al and National Perspectives, the Health Policy and Management Fall Policy Seminar Series—This week, James Corless, director, Transportation for America. The seminar includes a Q&A session and discussion. B14B Hampton House. eB

Thurs., Nov. 3, 1 p.m. “Proba-bilistic Models of Sensorimotor Control and Decision Making,” a Neuroscience research seminar with Daniel Wolpert, University of Cambridge. West Lecture Hall (ground floor), WBSB. eB

Thurs., Nov. 3, 1:30 p.m. “Banded Estimation and Predic-tion for Linear Time Series,” an Applied Mathematics and Statis-tics seminar with Yulia Gel, Uni-versity of Waterloo. 304 White-head. HW

Thurs . , Nov. 3 , 3 p .m. “Mul-tiscale Mechanical Models of Native and Bioengineered Tis-sues,” a Mechanical Engineering seminar with Victor Barocas, Uni-versity of Minnesota. 210 Hod-son. HW

Thurs., Nov. 3, 4 to 6 p.m., and fri., Nov. 4, 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The Futures Seminar—The Program in Latin American Stud-ies, with Paul Gootenberg, SUNY at Stony Brook; Edmund Gordon, University of Texas at Austin; and Eric Hershberg, American Uni-versity. Mason Hall Auditorium (Thursday) and Charles Com-mons (Friday). HW

fri., Nov. 4, 11 a.m. “Using Transport Timescales to Inter-pret Estuarine Eutrophication of the Chesapeake Bay,” a CEAFM

seminar with Jian Shen, Virginia Institute of Marine Science. 50 Gilman. HW

fri., Nov. 4, noon. “The Mod-ern World-System as Intellectu-al Discovery and Adventure,” a Sociology seminar with Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University. 526 Mergenthaler. HW

Mon., Nov. 7, noon. “Chromo-some 5 and 7 Abnormalities in Oncology Personnel Handling Anti-Cancer Drugs,” a Johns Hopkins Education and Research Center for Occupational Safety and Health seminar with Melissa McDiarmid, University of Mary-land School of Medicine. Lunch provided. W2030 SPH. eB

Mon., Nov. 7, noon. “Chalk It Up to Biophysics,” a Biophysics seminar with Jon Lorsch, SoM. 111 Mergenthaler. HW

Mon., Nov. 7, noon. “Heme Traf-ficking From the Ground Up,” a Biochemistry and Molecular Biol-ogy seminar with Iqbal Hamza, University of Maryland. W1020 SPH. eB

Mon., Nov. 7, 12:15 p.m. “Non-coding RNAs: With a Viral Twist,” a Carnegie Institution Embry-ology seminar with Joan Steitz, Yale University. Rose Auditorium, 3520 San Martin Drive. HW

Mon., Nov. 7, 4 p.m. Hopkins Medicine Distinguished Speaker Series—“Viral Reaction: Emer-gent Disease in an Increasingly Connected Society—Implications for Science, Medicine and Policy” with Anthony Fauci, director, NIAID. West Lecture Hall, Arm-strong Medical Education Bldg. eB

Mon., Nov. 7, 4 p.m. “Resol-vent Estimates in Trapping Geom-etries,” an Analysis seminar with Jared Wunsch, Northwestern Uni-versity. Sponsored by Mathemat-ics. 300 Krieger. HW

S P e C I a L e V e N T S

Thurs., Nov. 3, 6 to 7:30 p.m. Town Hall Meeting about planning the new community garden on the JHU at Eastern campus, a chance for Homewood faculty, staff and students and other local residents

to provide input in the creation of this new community space. (See story, p. 1.) Attendees can sign up for garden plots, participate in a naming contest and offer ideas for making the garden a fun and enriching space. For more infor-mation email jhucommgarden@ gmail.com. 1st floor, JHU@East-ern.

W o r K S H o P S

Tues., Nov. 1, 1:30 p.m. “Testing and Grading,” an Eyes on Teach-ing workshop open to all grad students, postdoctoral fellows, lecturers and faculty in KSAS or WSE. To register, go to www.cer .jhu.edu/events.html. Sponsored by the Center for Educational Resources. Garrett Room, MSE Library. HW

Thurs., Nov. 3, 1 p.m. “Univer-sal Design—How Accommodat-ing Disabilities Improves Learning for All,” a Bits & Bytes workshop. The training is open to full-time Homewood faculty, lecturers and TAs; staff are also welcome to attend. Registration is strongly encouraged; go to www.cer.jhu .edu/events.html. Sponsored by the Center for Educational Resources. Garrett Room, MSE Library. HW

fri., Nov. 4, 12:30 p.m. “Job Search Strategies for Internation-al Students,” a SAIS Office of Career Services workshop. (The event is open to SAIS students only.) To RSVP, go to SAIS-Works. 507 Nitze Bldg. SaIS

fri., Nov. 4, 2 to 6 p.m. The Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality presents the second in its Material Emotion-ality workshop series. HW

• “Situated Sublimations: Art and Psychic Displacement in a Mexican City” with Karen Rodriguez, University of Gua-najuato, Mexico. 132 Gilman.

• “Listening: Kinesthetic Aware ness in Contemporary Dance” with Gabrielle Brandstetter, Free University of Berlin. Co-sponsored by German and Romance Languages and Lit-eratures. 388 Gilman.

• “Seeing Ecstasy: Kleitsts The-atre,” with Katrin Pahl, KSAS. 132 Gilman.

President Ronald J. Daniels announced last week that he had appointed a search committee to

identify a successor to Jessica P. Einhorn, who will retire as dean of the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies on June 30, 2012, following what Daniels termed “a decade of exemplary service.” “There would be no more fitting tribute to Dean Einhorn and all of her accom-plishments at SAIS and at Johns Hopkins than to identify a worthy successor,” Dan-iels said. “One of my highest priorities this academic year is to find an exemplary leader to build upon Jessica’s platform of success and to usher SAIS into the next phase of its remarkable history.” Lloyd Minor, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs will chair the search. Pam Cranston, vice provost

for international programs and vice dean of the Carey Business School, will be vice chair. Shelly Storbeck of the executive search firm Storbeck/Pimentel has been retained to facilitate the search, Daniels said, adding that thoughts and nominations, which will be kept in strict confidence, should be sent directly to the search committee at [email protected]. Members of the committee, in addition to Minor and Cranston, are Karen Ban-deen-Roche, the Hurley-Dorrier Professor and chair of the Department of Biostatis-tics, Bloomberg School of Public Health; L. Ebony Boulware, associate professor of medicine and epidemiology, associate direc-tor of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research, and associate director of the Johns Hopkins

Search committee appointed to identify next SAIS dean A D M I N I S T R A T I O N

KL2 Clinical Research Scholars Program, schools of Medicine and Public Health; Steven David, vice dean for undergraduate education, Krieger School of Arts and Sci-ences; Michael Eicher, senior vice president for development and external affairs; Nicole Epps, graduate student in Middle East stud-ies and international economics, SAIS; and Peter Flaherty, SAIS alumnus, chair of the SAIS advisory council and managing direc-tor of Arcon Partners LLC. Also, Louis Forster, SAIS alumnus, mem-ber of the SAIS advisory council, trustee of The Johns Hopkins University, senior man-aging director of Cerberus Capital Manage-ment and chairman of Cerberus Asia Pacific Advisors; Francisco Gonzalez, associate pro-fessor of Latin American studies, SAIS; Ken-neth Keller, director of the Bologna Center and professor of science and technology

policy, SAIS; David M. Lampton, dean of faculty, the George and Sadie Hyman Professor of China Studies and director of the China Studies Program, SAIS; Peter Lewis, associate professor and director of the African Studies Program, SAIS; Tobie Meyer-Fong, associate professor and director of graduate studies in His-tory, Krieger School of Arts and Sci-ences; Thomas Quinn, professor of med-icine, pathology, international health, epidemiology, and molecular microbiol-ogy and immunology, and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health, schools of Medicine and Public Health; Dorothy Sobol, senior adjunct professor of international economics and emerging markets, SAIS; and Philip Tang (staff to the committee), senior adviser to the provost.


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PS-2011 JHU Gazette 10-3.qxd 10/3/11 6:22 PM Page 1

of U.S. health care expenditures in 2009—$293.2 billion—were for medications and nondurable medical products. Lau said that a large-scale switch to oral medications has the potential not only to decrease costs but also to reduce the need for puncturing veins to insert intravenous tubes or medications directly, procedures that carry a higher risk of hospital-acquired bloodstream infections and longer hospital stays. Simple reminders to physicians that their patients may be eligible to switch medication types could yield large savings, the researchers said. The four medications reviewed in the study were chlorothiazide, used to treat high blood pressure and address fluid retention; voriconazole, an anti-fungal drug; leveti-

racetam, to stop seizures; and pantoprazole, for acid reflux. By combing Johns Hopkins’ computerized provider order entry system, the researchers examined whether patients receiving these drugs intravenously also were prescribed oral medications or if they were being fed solid meals, another indication that they would likely be able to swallow pills. In 2010, 10,905 doses of the four medi-cations were given intravenously to patients admitted through the Department of Medi-cine. Lau said that the drugs are given even more frequently in surgery patients. The team compared those results with the cost of the various medications. For example, the wholesale cost of a 5-milligram tablet of chlorothiazide is $1.48; an equiva-lent dose of the drug given intravenously is $357.24, more than 200 times as much. Pantoprazole, the most commonly admin-istered medication in the study, is $4.09 per 40-milligram tablet, while a 40-milligram vial is $144. That medication is often given to patients several times a day. The potential


IV to pills cost savings per patient for the acid reflux medication would be $680.98, the research-ers found. The researchers noted that not all patients are able to switch from the intravenous to the oral form of a drug. Diet orders may change, Lau said, or a physician may have a reason for not switching a particular patient to an oral medication. But even a small increase in the conversion of patients from IV to oral medication would have a substan-tial financial impact due to the considerable difference in costs between the two forms. Although this research looked at only the wholesale costs of the drugs, Lau said that other costs associated with giving medica-tion by IV could be reduced if fewer drugs were administered that way. The researchers chose these four drugs to study because the oral and IV forms are simi-lar, but many other drugs potentially could also be swapped out for an even greater cost savings. To implement the swaps, Lau said, hospi-

tals with computerized medication systems could add alerts to their programs that would appear when a patient on an IV medication meets eligibility criteria for oral medication intake. Lau cautioned, however, that doctors are already bombarded with reminders, and it might be best to start with drugs with the highest savings per dose, such as levetirace-tam and chlorothiazide. “There is a danger in overreminding,” Lau said. “Constant reminders may annoy doctors to the point where they stop paying attention. We need to study the best way to get doctors to switch from IV to oral medica-tions.” Education, he said, is another avenue. Teaching doctors that oral medication is a cheaper alternative to IV may encourage them to make the switch without subject-ing them to regular, potentially irritating reminders. Other Johns Hopkins researchers involved in the study are Brian L. Pinto, David R. Thiemann and Christoph U. Lehmann. G

B y a m y l u n D a y

Homewood

The Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum is celebrating Halloween by unveiling a recently conserved

2,000-year-old Roman curse tablet, which spells out an anonymous plea for the grisly demise of a slave named Plotius. It is one of five tablets that have been part of the university’s collection since 1908, when graduate student William Sherwood Fox began the painstaking process of studying and deciphering the lead tablets. Plotius’ curse “was found rolled together with four others and pierced through by an iron nail,” according to Elisabeth Schwinge, a graduate student in the inter-departmental program in Classical Art and Archaeology, which is based in the Krieger School’s Classics Department. “The Latin name for a curse is defixio, which means ‘to pin down.’” The individual tablets are stand-ins for the cursed people, with

the nail symbolizing their pinning down, Schwinge said. No one knows what Plotius did to invite someone to implore the gods to summon “the triple-headed hound to snatch away [his] heart,” or to plague him with fevers so intense that they “overcome him to the point where they snatch away his soul.” And no one knows who placed the curse on poor Plotius; while the cursed person had to be identified very carefully, the identity of the person placing the curse was just as carefully concealed out of fear of retribution. But Plotius’ curse is now visible, in part due to the recent conservation work of the tablet by Sanchita Balachandran, the museum’s curator and conservator. Schwinge and Balachandran will be offer-ing their insight into the Plotius tablet during two short talks starting at 12:15 p.m. today, Oct. 31, in the museum, which is in Room 150 of Homewood’s Gilman Hall. The curse will also be on view for the remainder of the semester. For a sneak peak at the tablet, go to the museum’s website at tinyurl.com/6x9arbx.

Unveiling an ancient Romancurse to celebrate Halloween

B y v a n e S S a m c m a i n S


Using a patient’s own stem cells, researchers at Johns Hopkins have corrected the genetic alteration that

causes sickle cell disease, a painful, disabling inherited blood disorder that affects mostly African-Americans. The corrected stem cells were coaxed into immature red blood cells in a test tube that then turned on a normal version of the gene. The research team cautions that the work, done only in the laboratory, is years away from clinical use in patients but should pro-

vide tools for developing gene therapies for sickle cell disease, or SCD, and a variety of other blood disorders. In an article published online Aug. 31 in Blood, the researchers say that they are one step closer to developing a feasible cure or long-term treatment option for patients with SCD, which is caused by a single DNA letter change in the gene for adult hemo-globin, the principal protein in red blood cells needed to carry oxygen. In people who inherit two copies of the genetic altera-tion—one from each parent—the red blood

cells are sickle-shaped rather than round. The misshapen red blood cells clog blood vessels, leading to pain, fatigue, infections, organ damage and premature death. Although there are drugs and painkillers that control SCD symptoms, the only known cure—achieved rarely—has been bone mar-row transplant. But because the vast majority of SCD patients are African-American and few African-Americans have registered in the bone marrow registry, it has been difficult to find compatible donors, says Linzhao Cheng, a professor of medicine and associate director for basic research in the Division of Hematol-ogy in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and also a member of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering. “We’re now one step closer to developing a combination cell and gene therapy method that will allow us to use patients’ own cells to treat them.” Using one adult patient at The Johns Hopkins Hospital as their first case, the researchers isolated the patient’s bone mar-row cells. Then, after generating induced pluripotent stem, or iPS, cells—adult cells that have been reprogrammed to behave like embryonic stem cells—from the bone mar-row cells, they put one normal copy of the hemoglobin gene in place of the defective one using genetic engineering techniques. The researchers sequenced the DNA from 300 different samples of iPS cells to identify those that contained correct copies of the hemoglobin gene and found four. Three of these iPS cell lines didn’t pass muster in subsequent tests. “The beauty of iPS cells is that we can grow a lot of them and then coax them into becoming cells of any kind, including red blood cells,” Cheng said. In its process, his team converted the corrected iPS cells into immature red blood cells by giving them growth factors. Further testing showed that the normal hemoglobin gene was turned on properly in these cells,

Researchers try correcting sickle cell disease with stem cellsalthough at less than half of normal levels. “We think these immature red blood cells still behave like embryonic cells and, as a result, are unable to turn on high enough levels of the adult hemoglobin gene,” Cheng said. “We next have to learn how to properly con-vert these cells into mature red blood cells.” The Food and Drug Administration has approved only one drug treatment for SCD, hydroxyurea, whose use was pioneered by George Dover, chief of Pediatrics at the

Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. Outside of bone marrow transplants, frequent blood transfusions and narcotics can control acute episodes. The research was funded by grants from the Maryland Stem Cell Fund and the National Institutes of Health, and by a fel-lowship from the Siebel Foundation. Authors on the paper are Jizhong Zou, Xiaosong Huang, Sarah Dowey, Prashant Mali and Cheng, all of Johns Hopkins.

Related websitesLinzhao Cheng: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ institute_cell_engineering/experts/ linzhao_cheng.html

www.stemcelllab.org/Cheng_ Laboratory/Main.html

Institute for Cell engineering: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ institute_cell_engineering


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

NoticesMinority Global Health Disparities research Program — Students in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences are invited to apply for the Minority Global Health Disparities Research Program, known as MHIRT, a summer internship for up to three months (from June to August).

H o m e w o o d

Office of Human ResourcesWyman Park Building, Suite W600410-516-7196

Critical postings within our Homewood Division include the following two positions; applica-tions are being accepted for these immediate opportunities. For a more detailed job description and to apply, go to jobs.jhu.edu.

49902 Fiduciary Services Specialist49667 Senior Research Analyst

Office of Human Resources98 N. Broadway, Suite 300410-955-2990

Are you a mid-level care provider looking for a great employment opportunity? The Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care, which is committed to both superb patient care and cutting-edge research, has several vacancies for applicants who strive to provide state-of-the-art patient care of the highest quality and compassion. For a detailed job description and to apply, go to jobs.jhu.edu.

48971 Nurse Practitioner/Physician Assistant48972 Nurse Practitioner/Physician Assistant48973 Nurse Practitioner/Physician Assistant

S c h o o l o f M e d i c i n e

One student from the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences will be chosen to participate. An application and two recommendation letters must be turned in to Lisa Jia, 237 Mergenthaler Hall, no later than Tuesday, Nov. 15. Additional information on research loca-tions and application materials is available in 237 Mergenthaler Hall and online at www.krieger.jhu.edu/research/globalhealth .html.

Hot JobsListed below are some of the university’s newest openings for in-demand jobs that we most urgently need to fill.

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

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

H U M A N R E S O U R C E S

Office of Human Resources2021 E. Monument St.410-955-3006

The Bloomberg School of Public Health is seeking skilled applicants for several administrative coordinator positions. We are looking for individuals who posses good computer, organizational and communication skills. For a detailed job description and to apply, go to jobs.jhu.edu.

50132 Senior Administrative Coordinator49663 Administrative Coordinator 50157 Administrative Coordinator

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B y k a t e p a l l a n t

Advanced Academic Programs

The Johns Hopkins University is now accepting applications for the Mas-ter’s in Biotechnology Enterprise and

Entrepreneurship, or MBEE, a unique gradu-ate degree launching in spring 2012 that is grounded in the life sciences but intended for biotechnology professionals working out-side the research setting to commercialize biotechnology products. The degree will be offered by Advanced Academic Programs in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. “This highly targeted, applied professional degree will develop students capable of working in mid- to senior-level positions who understand science and who are also skilled in the complexities of biotechnol-ogy commercialization,” said Lynn Johnson Langer, director of Johns Hopkins’ Biotech-nology Enterprise and Regulatory Affairs programs. “We’re looking to prepare the next generation of life science professionals by bringing together a strong science foun-dation with biotechnology enterprise and entrepreneurship.” Biotechnology companies need trained

professionals in the field of biotechnol-ogy enterprise and entrepreneurship to fully commercialize the vast number of products from the research-heavy industry. Graduates will have the knowledge to comply with federal and state regulatory statutes for the development, approval and commercializa-tion of drugs, biologics, foods and medical devices. The MBEE leverages the best enterprise and regulatory components of the existing graduate programs in the Johns Hopkins Center for Biotechnology Education. The degree allows working professionals, who need weekend, evening and online courses, to fit their educational ambitions into their professional careers. This degree will be offered online, at the Montgomery County Campus and at the Homewood campus. The biotechnology enterprise and entre-preneurship degree consists of 10 graduate courses, including a final practicum course to gain real-world experience. Although not required, students may choose a concentra-tion in legal/regulatory or marketing and communications and must complete three courses in that concentration area. For more about the MBEE degree, go to advanced.jhu.edu/academic/biotechnology/ m-in-bee/index.htm.

Master’s in biotech enterprise and entrepreneurship launches

B y a l i c i a S a m u e l S

Bloomberg School of Public Health

A new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy and at Colum-

bia University finds that the rate of alcohol involvement in fatal motor vehicle crashes in the United States is much lower among drivers with Canadian licenses than among drivers with U.S. or Mexican licenses. The prevalence of alcohol involvement in fatal crashes was 27 percent for both U.S. and Mexican drivers, and 11 percent for Canadian drivers. Similarly, alcohol impair-ment was found in 23 percent of U.S. and Mexican drivers and 8 percent of Canadian drivers involved in a fatal crash. Research from other countries finds that foreign driv-ers are at greater risk of crashes than native drivers. In contrast, this study shows that drivers licensed in Mexico and Canada who were involved in fatal crashes in the United States had the same or less alcohol impair-ment than U.S.-licensed drivers. The report is published in the October issue of Injury Prevention and is available on the journal’s website. “Our findings were unexpected, partly because the substantial cultural differences between the U.S. and Mexico led us to anticipate differences in alcohol-related crashes,” said lead study author Susan P. Baker, a professor with the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy, part of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “We also anticipated that Canadian drivers in U.S. crashes would be similar to U.S. drivers because the rate

of alcohol-related fatal crashes is similar within the two countries.” Together, Mexi-can and Canadian drivers comprise more than 70 percent of all foreign-licensed driv-ers involved in fatal crashes in the United States. As a possible explanation, the research-ers speculate that the less prominent role of alcohol in fatal crashes of Canadian-licensed drivers in the United States may suggest that a larger proportion of Canadians were traveling on family vacation or business, situations that may be less likely to involve alcohol. Crashes at night, when alcohol is more likely to be involved, were also least common among Canadian-licensed drivers. And finally, it is also possible that Canadi-ans are less likely to drive after drinking. Data for this study came from the Fatal-ity Analysis Reporting System, a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration database of fatal traffic crashes. Study sub-jects were drivers age 16 years or older who were licensed in the United States, Mexico or Canada and involved in a U.S. crash from 1998 to 2008 that resulted in at least one death. Alcohol involvement was defined as having a blood alcohol content of 0.01 g/dl or greater, and alcohol impairment was defined as having a blood alcohol content of 0.08 g/dl or higher. Additional authors of the study are Joanne E. Brady and Guohua Li, both of Columbia University; and George W. Rebok, of Johns Hopkins. The research was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health and the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Fewer Canadian drivers alcohol-impaired in U.S. fatal car crashes


Classifieds M A R K E T P L A C E

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.

PLaCING aDS

aParTMeNTS/HouSeS for reNT

Bolton Hill, 1BR studio apt, huge windows, fp, full kitchen, deck, yd, priv prkng, huge BA has double vanities, sep shower and soaking tub, can be partly furn’d, great for short-term residents, nr metro. $950/mo incl utils. [email protected].

Deep Creek Lake/Wisp, cozy 2BR cabin w/full kitchen, call for wkly/wknd rentals. 410-638-9417 or [email protected] (for pics).

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

Mt Vernon, lg bsmt apt, could accommo-date 3 people, nr JHMI shuttle. $1,350/mo incl all utils. 425-890-1327 or [email protected].

Mt Washington, 3BR, 2.5BA condo, dw, W/D, CAC, lg balcony, garage prkng, lg swimming pool and tennis court, nr I-83/light rail, avail Nov 1. $1,400/mo + utils. 443-220-2138 or [email protected].

Nottingham/White Marsh, 2BR, 2BA TH w/vaulted ceilings, fp, W/D. $1,200/mo. 240-522-9075 or [email protected].

Perry Hall, 1BR apt w/new appls, fresh paint, crpt, laundry rm, on dead-end street (no facing houses for privacy), great for senior living or mature tenant, easy access to 95/695. $1,000/mo. 443-882-5266 or [email protected].

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

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

2BR, 1BA RH in NE Balto, nr Good Sam/Morgan, CAC/heat. $1,000/mo. 917-553-6461.

Sublet 1BR apt, Nov 19–30, quiet neigh-borhood, 15-min walk to Penn Station. $25/day all-inclusive. 573-529-4358 (eve) or [email protected].

3BR, 3.5BA house 6 blks south of JHH, 2-car garage. [email protected].

2907 St Paul St, newly renov’d 1BR apt, 1st flr, hdwd flrs, new cabinets, safe and quiet neighborhood. $900/mo incl heat, water. [email protected].

HouSeS for SaLe

Catonsville, fully renov’d 3BR, 2BA RH, hdwd flrs throughout, new windows, move-in ready, affordable. $149,900. 443-851-6414 or [email protected].

Ellicott City, 4BR, 2BA+ colonial, quiet cul-

de-sac location, great school district, perfect for young family. $550,000. 410-531-0321 or www.homesandland.com/Real_Estate/ MD/City/Ellicott_City/listingid/17510859 .html.

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

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

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

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

Timonium/Lutherville, 4BR, 2.5BA house, 5 fin’d levels, fp, hdwd flrs, nr I-83, easy access to all Hopkins campuses. $420,000. Val, 443-994-8938.

rooMMaTeS WaNTeD

Share furn’d Fells Point house (N Colling-ton Ave), w/2 F SPH students, new W/D, lg, renov’d kitchen, BR is well lit w/new blinds and crpt, access to rooftop deck w/garden, nr waterfront/JHMI/downtown by public trans-portation, possibility to renew lease. $600/mo + utils. Jordan, 303-257-2929.

F prof’l/grad student wanted to share 3BR, 1.5BA TH in Middle River, fp, walk-in clos-et, off bus line and train station. $600/mo incl utils, cable, Internet. [email protected].

F grad or staff wanted to share furn’d 3BR, 2BA house, short-term OK, avail mid-Dec. $550/mo incl utils + sec dep. skbzok@ verizon.net.

Share all new refurbished TH w/medical students, 4BRs, 2 full BAs, CAC, W/D, dw, w/w crpt, 1-min walk to JHMI, 924 N Broadway. [email protected].

M nonsmoker wanted for 2BR, 3BA TH, 2 blks to the JHMI campus, prking provided, no pets. $700/mo. maimon.hubbi@gmail .com.

Nonsmoker wanted for rm in new TH, walking distance to JHMI, no pets. 301-717-4217 or [email protected].

F prof’l wanted for lg, unfurn’d BR in 3BR home nr Ft Meade, on golf course, gym area w/treadmill and weight system, community swimming pool, tennis court, walking/run-ning trails. $700/mo + 1/3 elec and 1/3 cable + $400 sec dep (terms negotiable). Timisha, 301-887-3066 or [email protected].

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

Looking for tutor to teach Dutch, an eager student seeks patient tutor; also want com-plete Nikon Multiphot macro camera sys-tem or parts. [email protected].

Responsible and loving pet-, baby- or house-sitter avail, experienced w/special needs children and cats or dogs, refs avail. 202-288-1311 or [email protected].

Horse boarding in Baltimore Co, beautiful trails in Greenspring and Worthington val-leys from farm. $500/mo (stall board) and $250/mo (field board). 410-812-6716.

Free classical guitar concert, 3pm, Sunday, Nov 6, at St Thomas Aquinas, 37th and Roland Ave in Hampden.

Mature but relaxed prof’l looking for a rm, sublet, apt or share in the Charles Village vicinity, beginning Nov 1 (flexible). 347-403-2066 or [email protected].

Certified prof’l career coach avail to pro-vide coaching to students/young prof’ls. 410-375-4042 or [email protected].

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

Transmission repairs, rebuilt or used, free estimate, 20% discount for all JHU employ-ees, faculty, staff and students. 410-574-8822.

Clarinet and piano lessons offered by Pea-body master’s student. 240-994-6489 or [email protected].

Certified nursing asst avail, 17 yrs’ experi-ence w/seniors and nanny care. Linda, 443-467-2833.

Piano lessons, patient instruction from experienced teacher w/Peabody doctorate. 410-662-7951.

Matlab tutor avail (GUI, image processing, engineering), flexible schedule, rate var-ies case by case but low rate guaranteed. [email protected].

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

Masterpiece Landscaping: knowledgeable, experienced individual, on-site consulta-tion, transplanting, bed preparation, instal-lation, sm tree and shrub shaping; licensed. Terry, 410-652-3446.

Tutor for all subjects/levels; remedial and gifted; also help w/college counseling, speech and essay writing, editing, proofread-ing. 410-337-9877 (after 8pm) or [email protected].

Affordable and professional landscaper/cer-tified horticulturist available to maintain existing gardens, also designing, planting or masonry; free consultations. David, 410-683-7373 or [email protected].

Friday Night Swing Dance Club, open to public, great bands, no partners necessary. 410-663-0010 or www.fridaynightswing.com.

Licensed landscaper avail for lawn mainte-nance, yd cleanup; other services incl trash hauling, fall/winter leaf or snow removal. Taylor Landscaping LLC. 410-812-6090 or [email protected].

boston street | baltimore410.534.3287 | langermanns.com

In the restaurant or in the boardroomlet Chef Langermann handle the details.

CarS for SaLe

’89 Chevy 3/4 or 1-ton pickup truck, 4x4, rebuilt motor, new tires. $2,600. John, 443-750-7750.

ITeMS for SaLe

Beautiful sofa, in excel cond, lg entertain-ment system, 27" TV; buyer haul all three items. $165. [email protected].

Oak entertainment center, $500; 1967 Wurlitzer Americana jukebox w/100+ 45 records; baby swing, like new, $55; Fender acoustic guitar, $200; best offers accepted. Chris, 443-326-7717.

New exterior French doors, music cassette tapes, fitness chair, 21" TV, 35mm cameras, silk flowers and vase, Asian decor pillows, office file units, men’s travel bag, dining rm set, full-length silver fox coat, BlackBerry Bold accessories, other misc items. 443-824-2198 or [email protected].

Sand beach chairs (2), inkjet printer, oil-filled heaters (3) and baseboard heaters (2), portable canvas chair, keyboard case, 100W amplifier. 410-455-5858 or iricse [email protected].

Round wood kitchen table w/4 chairs, $175/best offer; twin bed w/metal frame, mattress, boxspring, sheets incl’d, $110; KidCo Config-ure safety gate w/2 fence and 1 gate sections, $60; buyer must pick up. 202-360-8468.

Boy’s toddler clothes, sizes 18 mo to 2T, pants ($2/ea), shirts ($1.50/ea), in excel cond. 443-303-9047.

Conn trombone, nice horn, $175; Yamaha Yas23 alto sax, like new, $775. Suzette, 443-912-8055.

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

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

Belkin Surf N300 wireless and wired router, all parts incl’d (but not orig box), $30; copy of Introductory Quantum Mechanics, 4th edition, by Liboff, hardcover, covers, binding and pages nearly flawless, $80. 201-669-0967.

Conn alto saxophone, in excel cond. 410-488-1886.

Dark wood entertainment center, 68"H x 50"W x 17"D, $150; 4-drawer locking lateral file, 53"H x 42"W x 19.5"D, in great shape, $400. 443-690-7706 or [email protected].

SerVICeS/ITeMS offereD or WaNTeD

PT babysitter needed for Mt Washing-ton–area family, must be responsible, excel driver w/own car, take kids to school AM, pick up late afternoon, lt cooking and housekeeping, free time during the day, free rm and board w/pay. 301-412-5588 or [email protected].

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12 THE GAZETTE • October 31, 2011

Calendar C o L L o Q u I a

Mon., oct. 31, and Tues., Nov. 1, daylong. The Lavy Colloqui-um—“Jews and Empire,” with var-ious speakers. Sponsored by the Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Jewish Studies Program. Smokler Center for Jewish Life (Hillel). HW

Tues., Nov. 1, 4 p.m. “Televis-ing the Live Event: Spectacle and Doubt in the Making of Indian Television News,” an Anthropol-ogy colloquium with Amrita Ibra-him. 404 Macaulay. HW

Wed., Nov. 2, 3:30 p.m. “Detecting Gravitational Waves (And Doing Other Cool Phys-ics) With Millisecond Pulsars,” an STSci colloquium with Scott Ransom, National Radio Astron-omy Observatory. Bahcall Audi-torium, Muller Bldg. HW

Thurs., Nov. 3, 3 p.m. “Elec-troweak Physics in Molecules,” a Physics and Astronomy collo-quium with David DeMille, Yale University. Schafler Auditorium, Bloomberg Center. HW

fri., Nov. 4, 4 p.m. “Instrumen-talism Revisited,” a Philosophy colloquium with Arthur Fine, University of Washington, Seat-tle. 288 Gilman. HW

C o N f e r e N C e S

Mon., Nov. 7, 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Five Elements of Civil Society: A New Approach to Par-ticipation in Combating Trafficking, a SAIS Protection Project confer-ence with a keynote address, “The Role Business Can Play to End Trafficking in Persons” by Beathe-Jeanette Lunde, Carlson Hotels. To RSVP, call 202-663-5896 or [email protected]. Kenney Audi-torium, Nitze Bldg. SaIS

D I S C u S S I o N S /T a L K S

Mon., oct. 31, noon. “The Birth of the First Republic in Asia,” a SAIS China Studies Program discussion with Mi Chu and July Lu, both of the Library of Con-gress. To RSVP, call 202-663-5816 or email [email protected]. 806 Rome Bldg. SaIS

Tues., Nov. 1, 4:30 p.m. “How to End the Stalemate in Soma-lia,” a SAIS African Studies Program discussion with J. Peter Pham and Bronwyn Bruton, both of the Ansari Africa Center at the Atlantic Council. For more information, call 202-663-5676 or email [email protected]. 500 Bernstein-Offit Bldg. SaIS

Tues., Nov. 1, 5 p.m. “Self-Destruct: Why Economic Para-digms Rise and Fall,” a SAIS European Studies Program dis-cussion with Mitchell Orenstein, SAIS. For more information, call 202-663-5796 or email [email protected]. 806 Rome Bldg. SaIS

Xuetong, Tsinghua University, China. To RSVP, call 202-663-5816 or email [email protected]. Kenney Auditorium, Nitze Bldg. SaIS

f I L M / V I D e o

Wed., Nov. 2, 7 p.m. Screening of Eric Rohmer’s The Marquise of O, sponsored by Women, Gender and Sexuality in conjunction with its workshop series, Material Emo-tionality. (See “Workshops,” p. 8.) 113 Greenhouse. HW

Thurs., Nov. 3, 4:15 p.m. Screening of Enemies of the People: A Personal Journey Into the Heart of the Killing Fields, sponsored by the SAIS Southeast Asia Studies Program. To RSVP, email [email protected]. Rome Auditorium. SaIS

L e C T u r e S

Mon., oct. 31, 5:15 p.m. “Kaf-ka’s Labyrinth,” a German and Romance Languages and Litera-tures seminar with Bettine Menke, University of Erfurt. 479 Gilman. HW

Tues., Nov. 1, 4 p.m. “Thinking About Contracts: The Merchant of Venice,” a Humanities lecture by Regina Schwartz, Northwestern University. 208 Gilman. HW

Tues., Nov. 1, 6:30 p.m. The Max M. Fisher Lecture—“After the Crisis, the Compromise: The Politics of Economic Adjustment” by SAIS’ Matthias Matthjis, recip-ient of the 2011 Max M. Fisher Prize for Excellence in Teaching. To RSVP, call 202-663-5636 or email [email protected]. Kenney Auditorium, Nitze Bldg. SaIS

Tues., Nov. 1, 8 p.m. “Here There Be Monsters,” a Space Tele-scope Science Institute public lec-ture by Nolan Walborn, STSci. Bahcall Auditorium, Muller Bldg. HW

Wed., Nov. 2, 4:15 p.m. The Asher Achinstein Inaugural Lec-ture in Philosophy of Science—“Explanation and Scientific Prog-ress” by Arthur Fine, University of Washington, Seattle. Sponsored by the Center for History and Philosophy of Science. 132 Gil-man. HW

Wed., Nov. 2, 8 p.m. “The Mid-dle East Upheavals and Israel’s National Security,” a Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Jewish Studies Program lecture by Efraim Inbar, Bar-Ilan University. Smokler Cen-ter for Jewish Life (Hillel). HW

Wed., Nov. 2, 8 p.m. The Annu-al Sidney W. Mintz Lecture—“Mixed Blessings and Sorrowful Mysteries” by Stephan Palmie, University of Chicago. Sponsored by Anthropology. Mason Hall Auditorium. HW

fri., Nov. 4, 4 p.m. The 2011 Kenneth O. Johnson Memorial Lecture—“How Does the Brain Solve Visual Object Recogni-tion?” by James DiCarlo, MIT. Sponsored by the Krieger Mind/Brain Institute and Biomedical Engineering. Mason Hall Audito-rium. HW

Mon., Nov. 7, 5:30 p.m. The 2011 Samuel Iwry Lecture—“Books in Ancient Israel” by Alan

O C T . 3 1 – N O V . 7

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

aPL Applied Physics LaboratoryBrB Broadway Research BuildingCrB Cancer Research BuildingCSeB Computational Science and Engineering BuildingeB East BaltimoreHW HomewoodJHoC Johns Hopkins Outpatient CenterKSaS Krieger School of Arts and SciencesNeB New Engineering BuildingPCTB Preclinical Teaching BuildingSaIS School of Advanced International StudiesSoM School of MedicineSoN School of NursingSPH School of Public HealthWBSB Wood Basic Science BuildingWSe Whiting School of Engineering

CalendarKey

Wed., Nov. 2, noon. “Equity and Empowerment,” an Internation-al Health panel discussion with Alfred Sommer (dean emeritus), SPH; Asha George, SPH; Cesar Victora, Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil, and SPH; Daniel Taylor, Future Generations Grad-uate School of Applied Social Change and SPH; and moderator Robert Black, SPH. The event takes place in conjunction with the release of Daniel Taylor’s new book, Empowerment on an Unsta-ble Planet: From Seeds of Human Energy to a Scale of Global Change. A book signing reception will take place in the courtyard next to Sheldon Hall following the panel discussion. W1214 SPH. eB

Wed., Nov. 2, 5:30 p.m. “Revo-lutions and Transformations,” a Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at SAIS discussion with Temuri Yakobashvili, Georgian ambas-sador to the United States. To RSVP, call 202-663-7721 or email [email protected]. Rome Auditorium. SaIS

Thurs., Nov. 3, 7 p.m. “A Magi-cian’s Perspective,” a U.S.-Korea

Institute at SAIS discussion with Dale Salwak, Citrus College, the only American magician invited to perform in North Korea. To RSVP, go to uskoreainstitute.org/events/?event_id=89. Kenney Auditorium, Nitze Bldg. SaIS

fri., Nov. 4, 12:30 p.m. “Energy and Security in South Asia: Cooperation or Conflict?” a SAIS Energy, Resources and Environment Program discussion with Charles Ebinger, Brook-ings Institution To RSVP, email [email protected]. 806 Rome Bldg. SaIS

Mon., Nov. 7, 4:30 p.m. “Tunisians and Their Hopes for Democracy: Toward Democracy,” a SAIS Conflict Management Program discussion with Hatem Bourial, Tunisian TV personality and author. Co-sponsored by the American Tunisian Association. To RSVP, email [email protected]. 500 Bernstein-Offit Bldg. SaIS

Mon., Nov. 7, 5 p.m. “Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chi-nese Power,” a SAIS China Stud-ies Program discussion with Yan

Millard, University of Liverpool. Sponsored by Near Eastern Stud-ies. 50 Gilman. HW

Mon., Nov. 7, 6:30 p.m. The 2011 Turnbull Lecture presents Irish literary critic and cultural commentator Edna Longley. (See photo, this page.) Sponsored by the Writing Seminars. Mudd Auditorium. HW

M u S I C

Mon., oct. 31, 7:30 p.m. Pea-body Opera Potpourri. Free, but advance tickets required; call 410-234-4800. Friedberg Hall. Peabody

o P e N H o u S e S

Wed., Nov. 2, 3 to 6 p.m. JHU Center for Social Concern Open House, a chance to learn about opportunities for getting involved in the community; enjoy cider, pumpkin cake and appetizers; and receive CSC sunglasses. 3103 N. Charles St. (behind the red door). HW

S e M I N a r S

Mon., oct. 31, noon. “Protein NMR via Fuzzy Pictures,” a Bio-physics seminar with Miguel Lli-nas, Carnegie Mellon University. 111 Mergenthaler. HW

Mon., oct. 31, noon. “Race, Self-Selection and the Job Search Process,” a Sociology seminar with Devah Pager, Princeton University. 526 Mergenthaler. HW

Mon., oct. 31, 1 p.m. “Mos-quito Immunity to Diverse Patho-gens,” an Immunology Training Program seminar with George Dimopoulos, SPH. Tilghman Auditorium, Turner Concourse. eB

Mon., oct. 31, 1:30 p.m. “Opti-mizing the Quantity/Quality Trade-off in Connectome Infer-ence,” a Biomedical Engineering seminar with Carey Priebe, WSE. 110 Clark. HW (Videoconfer-enced to 709 Traylor. eB)

Mon., oct. 31, 4 p.m. “The Honor of American Male Slaves,” a History seminar with Bertram Wyatt-Brown, professor emeritus, University of Florida. 308 Gil-man. HW

edna Longley, an Irish literary critic and cultural commentator specializing in modern Irish and British poetry, will give the Percy Graeme Turnbull Memorial Lecture this week. Born in Cork in 1940, Longley studied in the 1960s at Trinity College Dublin, where her contemporaries included the poets Michael Longley, Derek Mahon and eavan Boland. She taught for many years in the School of english at Queen’s university, Belfast, where she is now professor emerita. She has written on W.B. yeats, Louis Mac-Neice, edward Thomas and the Great War poets. Her criticism of Northern Irish poetry is contained in ‘Poetry in the Wars’ (1986), ‘The Living Stream’ (1994) and ‘Poetry and Posterity’ (2000). The Turnbull Lecture series, which began in 1891, has brought to Homewood some of the most distinguished voices in poetry and criticism, including robert frost, T.S. eliot, Marianne Moore, W.H. auden, Charles eliot Norton, r.P. Blackmur, Northrop frye, W.S. Merwin and Harold Bloom. See Lectures.

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