Use the fields below to perform an advanced search of jhunewsletter.com - The Johns Hopkins News-Letter's archives. This will return articles, images, and multimedia relevant to your query.
1000 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
If you're looking for an album to mope to this Valentine's Day, look no further than the latest from Islands. Upon first listen, it's sort of unexpected how consumed with loss this disc is, whether it's the loss of a lover or a bandmate.
Some time in the last week, a new Facebook group Johns Hopkins Memes went viral on the newsfeeds of many Hopkins students. The emergence of the new group is part of a larger Facebook trend: college students across the nation are creating "meme pages" to spread information about their school to others who attend.
A Skull in Connemara, currently showing at Centerstage, is different from the usual fun-loving musical or romantic drama that one usually associates with theater. A dark comedy, its humor is often morbid, and the audience questions whether or not it was ethical to laugh.
Students come back to campus during intersession for different reasons, but for freshmen a popular incentive is participating in a one week B'more Program.
After more than 50 years, the Printing Services department will close on Feb. 24 as a result of rising costs. The University will rely instead on off-site, third party groups for stationary, business cards, class materials and all other print goods.
Sexual Health Awareness and Guidance (SHAG) Week kicked off with a make-it-yourself condom-gram and Valentine's Day card event at the Glass Pavilion on Monday. The newly created initiative is a week-long series of events and activities centered around raising awareness of safe sex practices in the Hopkins community.
The fifteenth annual session of the Johns Hopkins University Model United Nations Conference hosted approximately 1,600 high school students at the Renaissance Harbor Point Hotel in Baltimore from Feb. 9 to 12 for a simulation in international affairs. The conference drew participants from throughout the United States and around the world.
How can you tell I'm a Hopkins transplant at Oxford?
Rarely have I ever encountered someone in real life who genuinely has an issue supporting evolution as an explanation for how and all other life on our planet arrived in the present day. As the Internet has reminded me, there are people who cannot properly understand and appretiate evolution.
Nothing new here, right? Bitter single person deplores American commercialization of relationships to mask their own dismal romantic outlook, only to march home and cheerfully spend the night alone in bed, denying any feelings of inadequacy while taking in a couple heartfelt dramas and four servings of Ben & Jerry's.
I woke up in my ex's bed one morning this week, needing to run home and change before class. As she frantically pushed me out of bed, fearing that I was going to be late, I reassured her: "It's fine, I already know what I'm wearing."
As a freshman, Jake Appet was ready to hit the ground running after bring accepted into the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Research Program. Now a senior, Appet is a Writing Seminars major interested in script writing and is using his grant money to produce a movie based off a screenplay about a high school boy's social experiences, a script he has been working on for several semesters.
For some of us, the creation of Facebook meant another forum to use for our digital diary. After all, Livejournal was so 1995, and Twitter doesn't have nearly enough characters to emcompass our tumultuous emotional states.
The campaign for marriage equality in Maryland won an important victory on Tuesday when a joint panel of the Maryland legislature approved a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in the state. Governor O'Malley's bill, if passed in the full House and Senate, will make Maryland the eighth state to legalize gay marriage. This page applauds Governor O'Malley for his efforts in spearheading this long-overdue bill and urges the Maryland General Assembly to pass it without delay. For the first time in the fight for marriage equality, a majority of Marylanders support this legislation, while about 44 percent oppose it. Echoing national sentiment, Maryland residents have realized that prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying is antiquated and ought to be overturned. Their embrace of marriage equality is both well-founded and practical This page holds strongly that two people who wish to marry should be allowed to marry, regardless of their sexual preference. It is nobody's business to withhold from them this necessary right and to continue to do so is only deleterious to society. Allowing same-sex couples to marry will afford them the many benefits that marriage now brings to heterosexual couples, such as hospital visitation, taxation and inheritance rights, as well as access to family health coverage. In addition, same-sex marriage will bring to the state of Maryland and the city of Baltimore much needed financial relief. Because marriage license sales and income taxes will increase with an increase in newly married couples, so too will the economy benefits. In Maryland, it is estimated that extending rights to same-sex couples will bring upwards of $3 million a year. With Maryland's budget shortfall hovering around $1 billion and Baltimore's exceeding $100 million, legalizing gay marriage is an opportunity for economic gain that ought not be passed up. As a legislative body elected to serve the state of Maryland, the General Assembly must act to ensure that the demands of its constituents are met. Maryland has spoken. It's time for the elected officials to listen. ?
In last week's issue, The News-Letter ran an article, titled "Univ. declines to support wind energy bill," detailing Hopkins students' efforts to get President Daniels to sign a letter to Baltimore City Senator Catherine Pugh in support of the Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2012. The bill, if passed, would install 80 to 200 wind turbines off the coast of Ocean City, creating 400 to 600 megawatts of energy. This page supports these students' actions and this act. Though it would increase the cost of energy bills, it would also generate enough energy to supply power for 95 percent of homes on the Eastern Shore. Construction of offshore wind energy would also create jobs, which would boost the Maryland economy. Most importantly, results of the bill would greatly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which would improve local air quality and contribute to better practices in the fight to slow global warming. We feel that the benefits of this bill far outweigh the costs. In terms of the students who have been supporting this bill on the Hopkins campus, we would like to commend members of Students for Environmental Action and Maryland Student Climate Coalition, for continuing to gather student petitions, even after President Daniels stated that he would not write the letter, due to a lack of agreement on the subject within the University. Additionally, the students will attend the Offshore Wind Rally in Annapolis next Wednesday to show their support for the bill. While there are many other activist student groups on campus, we would encourage even more Hopkins students to rally around causes they believe merit their support. Though prioritizing school is obviously necessary during college, students should not forget that topics worthy of their attention exist outside campus as well. The President of St. Mary's College of Maryland has outwardly shown his support for the wind energy bill, and, according to a Facebook page for the event, all classes except for labs are cancelled at St. Mary's on the day of the rally, allowing many more students to attend. Those this disruption may be extreme, it is a good example of how communities can become collectively involved in discussing important topics. Hopkins students would probably object before professors had a chance if school were cancelled for such an event, but the idea of community engagement is all the more important to keep in mind here because it is not always a top priority.
Ever look at a map and wonder what it would be like if South America and Africa still fit together like puzzle pieces in one massive supercontinent? Geologists had previously thought that the next supercontinent would either form in the same place as the prior one, Pangaea, or on the complete opposite side of the world. Yale geologist Ross Mitchell and his team, however, think that the next supercontinent, which Mitchell dubbed Amasia, will form over the Arctic Ocean. There have been as many as four supercontinents in the Earth's history, and most scientists agree that there is another one in Earth's future, most likely in the next 50 million to 200 million years. Some scientists believe that this will occur through introversion, which is when the young, Atlantic Ocean would close to essentially recreate a futuristic Pangaea, which was centered over Africa. Other scientists have an extroversion hypothesis, where the older Pacific Ocean would close completely, forming a supercontinent on the other side of the Earth. Mitchell and his team believe that the next supercontinent, named Amasia for the convergence of the Americas with Asia, will form according to their orthoversion model. They came up with this model by looking at past supercontinents to see how far apart they had been from each other. Mitchell's team examined the magnetism of ancient rocks to determine the previous patterns of continental plate motion. Through their modeling, they found that there was a distance of 90 degrees between Pangaea and its predecessor, Rodinia, which existed one billion years ago. There was also a distance of 90 degrees between Rodinia and Nuna, which formed 1.8 billion years ago. Due to those measurements, Mitchell and his team inferred that the next continent will also be 90 degrees away from the previous continent, which is called orthoversion. Instead of forming over the Pacific or over the Atlantic, this model predicts that Amasia will form as a result of the closing of the Arctic and Caribbean Seas. Mitchell sees his prediction as a middle ground between the introversion and extroversion theories. Instead of the new supercontinent existing zero degrees or 180 degrees from Pangaea, this one will be 90 degrees from the former supercontinent. Nevertheless, Mitchell's theory is only a model. Hopkins University's Earth and Planetary Sciences professor Peter Olson feels that any type of prediction about the future has to be determined by the past, which is what Mitchell's study is based on. However, he thinks that, since the study is focusing so far into the future, there is no way to know what trends will actually be repeated. Olson is particularly concerned about the fact that Mitchell's theory involves a change in plate tectonic patterns, as North America is currently moving away from Europe. These current trends most likely support the extroversion theory. "He's not arguing that the current trends will produce this; he's arguing that some expected trends will produce this anticipated trend," Olson said. "If the current trends need to be modified, even if you have a good reason why they are going to be modified, you're still asking for a modification. And that's where their prediction becomes more problematic." While there is no way to tell exactly where the next supercontinent will occur, Mitchell believes that studying these trends is important because they contribute to the scientific knowledge of how continental plates move. "There are numerous implications of our result, with relevance both to our concepts of the internal workings of the Earth and to the better understanding of its changing surface geography," Mitchell wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
Forget about the joys of pot: driving within three hours after smoking marijuana increases your likelihood of causing a severe car crash. Thanks to observational studies done by researchers in Canada, the world's most popular illegal substance could join sleep deprivation and alcohol consumption as a widely-acknowledged contributor to driver impairment. A research team from Dalhousie University recently pioneered a meta-analysis of drivers who were killed or seriously injured in a motor vehicle accident. After reviewing a total of nine studies and 49,411 drivers, they determined that cannabis consumption nearly doubled the risk of a motor vehicle collision. Unlike previous studies, the analysis avoided mixed results by examining drivers who took cannabis prior to driving but were not under the influence of alcohol and other substances. The study obtained its results through blood samples and self-report. It focused on accidents that occurred on public roads and involved one or more moving vehicles, such as cars, vans, buses and motorcycles. While the researchers did not explore the effects of dosage on the risk and severity of collisions, the fatally-injured drivers they examined had high levels of tetrahydrocannabionol (THC), an active compound in marijuana, in their blood. This indicated that the drivers either consumed marijuana shortly before driving, or smoked a large quantity of it. Of the three studies that measured for THC levels in blood, all of them revealed a positive correlation between the risk of a car crash and elevated blood THC concentrations. However, the researchers maintain that more evidence is needed to confirm what levels of THC are needed to cause driving impairment, as well as whether cannabis contributes to minor collisions. Marijuana use has been increasing in recent years, and a greater number of drivers are driving under its influence. In 2004, a Canadian study found that four percent of adults reported driving within an hour of using pot. A roadside survey in 2007 indicated that 15 percent of Scotland drivers aged 17-39 admitted to consuming cannabis within 12 hours of driving. According to professor Wayne Hall from the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research, although the level of impairment from smoking pot is not as severe as alcohol intoxication, a public health response is warranted. However, Hall also claims that it is unclear whether roadside drug testing is effective. Most states and territories in Australia implement a drug-testing policy, but, as of now, no one has attempted to assess its effectiveness toward detecting drivers under the influence of cannabis. The problem arises from the fact that roadside drug testing relies on the success of random breath testing. While it is easy to measure blood alcohol levels using a breath test, it is difficult to gauge impairment using concentrations of THC in saliva. As a result, governments have often ignored the problem of defining boundaries for driving impairment by adopting a zero-tolerance policy. In addition, roadside testing has not been as widely implemented or as well-publicized as random breath testing. To supplement their findings, Hall believes that the researchers need to know the extent to which cannabis users are deterred from driving when they use cannabis. This, in turn, can help determine whether the roadside tests will successfully deter people from driving while drugged. Finally, the researchers found that drivers under the age of 35 have the greatest risk of getting involved in a vehicle collision after smoking marijuana. This reinforces Hall's belief that cannabis-detection protocols should be oriented toward younger drivers, since cannabis use is the highest in that population. The researchers hope that these findings will encourage countries to introduce better drug-testing protocols to better ensure safety on the roads. These findings support previous evidence that cannabis impairs motor skills needed for safe driving, suggesting that the general driving population will have lower incidences of severe collisions in comparison to those driving under the influence of cannabis.
Exploding batteries are not what you want to hear about when there is a cellphone in every pocket and bag. So a team of researchers has developed a diagnostic method for figuring out why batteries fail. Instead of cutting into the batteries and potentially destroying evidence in the process, the new technique uses an MRI to give a noninvasive picture of what's going on. If medical dramas have taught us anything, though, it's that patients with metal rods in their legs can't get MRIs. So it may seem odd to put a battery in the giant magnet machine. The researchers, who published their findings in Nature Materials this week, had some properties of matter on their side, though. For one thing, many metals are not magnetic and can actually cause more problems by warping images than by flying across the room. "Most metals are actually nonmagnetic," Alexej Jerschow, a contributor to the research from NYU, said. "But metal does distort images in MRI so that is something we have to pay attention to. We had to be very careful with how the battery is oriented with respect to the apparatus." The group, comprised of researchers from Cambridge, Stony Brook and New York University, used their technique to look at the electrodes of lithium ion batteries. MRI radio waves cannot penetrate very far into metal, but the researchers actually took advantage of this to focus on identifying subtle surface changes in the batteries that might cause problems. The researchers thought to use MRIs because other noninvasive techniques, such as neutron imaging, that shoot subatomic particles through running batteries to gather data are complicated and have drawbacks. In testing their method, the researchers found that microstructure build-up, or gunk, was accumulating on the electrodes after repeated charging. They looked at how this might be affecting the performance of the batteries by using the MRI data to produce three-dimensional figures for analysis. Some represented the "pristine state" of the lithium before charging and others showed its disturbed state after charging. "It is a very good example of a technique that I suspect will be used quite a bit in trying to improve current technologies," Tyrel McQueen, a solid state and inorganic chemistry researcher at Hopkins said. He pointed out, though, that the method may unearth limitations in addition to facilitating advances. "Batteries on the one hand are amazing technology, because I look at what the lithium ion battery is capable of today and a decade ago that would have been unheard of. But on the other hand I think one has to be careful in not putting batteries where they don't have strength." With batteries being called on to power increasingly demanding devices, their shortcomings are become more apparent. Their longevity, capacity and ability to recharge quickly are all limited. And for large instruments like cars an additional problem is the rate at which energy can exit the battery for acceleration. "I definitely think this is a big step forward," Jerschow said. "It's opening a new field where you have new abilities to assess batteries and look inside them. There are limitations of sensitivity, but its biggest strength is that you can make nondestructive measurements and we will go as far as we can with that."
Consider this for the plot setup of a Hollywood thriller: Leading virologists genetically engineer and mutate a Biosafety-Level 3 virus, rendering it dangerous enough to rapidly infect and prove the mortality of a fraction of the world's population. Perhaps you're saying you've heard this one before, but I'm not referring to Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later nor Stephen King's The Stand; I'm referring to a clear and present threat affecting all of us today. Last November, Ron Fouchier and his team at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Holland, engineered a new, mutant strain of lethal HPAI A (H5N1) - ?commonly known as "bird flu" - and intended to disseminate the details of the research. By all indications, this mutated strain is as contagious among humans as the common flu in that coughs and sneezes would be sufficient mediums for transmission from one carrier to a reservoir of potential hosts. To make matters bleaker than they already are, a look at the mortality rate of this virulent strain is simply frightening. As reported by the World Health Organization, records indicate that 345 of the 584 H5N1-contracted human victims have died; do the math and that yields a chilling fatality rate close to 60%. To put things in perspective, the 1918 influenza pandemic, one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history, exhibited a comparatively meager 2.5% mortality rate. The sole reason why H5N1 found in nature hasn't become a pandemic killer comparable to this 1918 influenza is because prior to Fouchier's research, H5N1 had been genetically incapable of human-to-human transmission, and despite its high mutation rate typical of RNA viruses, it had yet to evolve and find the necessary mutations to become "airborne." Following Fouchier's discovery, however, this all changed. This raises the question: how will the research's findings be harnessed to benefit public health as well as future research in influenza, when the finding itself is a threat to humanity? According to the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), it's a threat all too great to overlook. The board has since halted its publication for widespread dissemination. Officials of NSABB and fellow proponents of this "censorship" based their argument on the dangers associated with nefarious uses of the research findings, given that details could become a "recipe" for biological weapons desired by terrorists, belligerent states, or rogue actors. Moreover, biosecurity experts have constantly brought to attention the possibility of an accidental release by a laboratory with poor biosecurity measures. Though the NSABB brings to light many legitimate concerns for the sake of public safety, and I commend the organization for their vigilance in the science community, I find their decision to urge censorship a misguided and mistaken one. Sure, worst-case scenario, Fouchier's research could bring about deleterious consequences that could theoretically wipe a fraction of the human population from the face of the planet. But it's important to see this possibility within appropriate proportions and recognize the other side of the spectrum. Foremost, I strongly agree with Dr. Schaffner, Chairman of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt, who reasons that the "biowarfare threat of influenza is very low." Not only is the spread of H5N1 impossible to control with the advanced transportation systems of modern society, but if terrorists indeed tried to engineer mutations in the H5N1 virus, they would be diverting a lot of resources away from developing proven weapons that are far more effective at targeting specific populations. Therefore, pursuing an H5N1-based biological weapon is just against all logic, and publication would have little if any effect on non-state actors, because the idea simply goes against cost-effectiveness. The other source of misguidance that led to the NSABB's poor decision is their disregard for the fact that H5N1 has a naturally high mutation rate. Wild H5N1 found in nature is only one step away from Fouchier's man-made mutation, and if circumstances permit, there exists a probability that the virus will mutate without human intervention. It's thus critical to understand that an outbreak could be brought about by nature-an occurrence that offers no warning signals. The preventive measure that should be taken is this: publish Fouchier's project and immediately push research efforts for a vaccine. By doing so, valuable knowledge for the development of a vaccine for H5N1 from that point onward would be freely shared, maximizing efficiency and allowing the consolidation of priceless knowledge from the brightest scientists around the world. Another problem inherent in the NSABB's decision to advise censorship is that they are late. There's an interesting phenomenon called the Streisand effect, in which an attempt to hide information actually publicizes the information more widely. Immediately following the initial reports of this mutated virus, the media stormed in and have since blown the situation out of proportion. Already, thousands of scientists have examined Fouchier's project in its entirety, and a Japanese laboratory retrieved similar results to that of Fouchier's. What could possibly halt the spreading now? The answer is that nothing can stop the spread of Fouchier's research, and nothing should have attempted to stop the spread in the first place. In past centuries, we've seen that advancements in science are most prolific in a free-market atmosphere of ideas where knowledge is shared and information flows freely throughout the science community. I find it crucial to preserve this aspect of science, because the study of science is above all a collaborative process. Now, with the research being redacted and the whole crisis about this contagious virus still up in the air, we can only wait and take a deep breath. But then again, maybe that's not a great idea.
The Iran issue appears destined to take a particularly troubling route. After President Obama and EU policymakers labeled their negotiations "unyielding," the international community, backed by the UN, adopted a series of harsh sanctions aimed at dilapidating the Islamic Republic. It is difficult to excoriate the relentless attempts of certain politicians to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Military options, although not openly being pursued, are by all means on the table. However, before embarking on a policy that looks all too similar to nightmarish wars of the recent past, it is imperative that the facts and implications be given a closer look. Let us first examine the possibility of a scenario few find likely: the possibility that Iran is actually not in pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Understandably, a decent majority of those who hear that argument cringe, but then again, a decent majority cringed when they heard that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction in 2003. That by itself warrants that this unlikely scenario be taken into fair consideration. The serious suspicions are based on Iran's unwillingness to allow inspectors past certain points and the magnitude of the Iranian nuclear program. While both of these points have justifiably triggered a particular conclusion about the nuclear program, examination of both is necessary. First, the fact that Iran is unwilling to permit a full investigation of its nuclear facilities is a setback that has more to do with the structure of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) itself, than with the Iranian government. The IAEA does not have legal jurisdiction to monitor nuclear facilities to the extent needed to fulfill its Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) mandate. This subtlety is crucial because it indicates that there is no concrete evidence politicians cite when referencing Iran's nuclear weapons development program (much like the case with Iraq in 2003). It also brings light to the fact that the restrictions facing the IAEA inspectors are not unique to their missions in Iran. In fact, every other member of the NPT that has been subjected to these types of investigations has limited the inspectors just as much if not more than the Iranians have. If the limitations on the inspectors are indications of a nuclear weapons program, then by that logic every country the IAEA has ever inspected is in pursuit of nuclear weapons. Second, the mere magnitude of Iran's nuclear development program is a poor criterion on which a politician should base his certainty. It is inarguably a ground for concern, but the international community should have much more to rely on before cutting Iran off from the rest of the world (let alone wage a war). Furthermore, as with the restrictions on IAEA inspectors, Iran is by no means the only country with an alarmingly disproportionate nuclear program. Let us now consider the more likely scenario: Iran is preparing itself for a future that may involve nuclear weapons. The world should be paying very close attention, but the unforgiving punishments and outlandish assumptions demand severe reevaluation. The punishments, first of all, are offensively partial. The United Nations, an organization founded on the principles of rights and fairness among all member states has commended destructive sanctions against Iran for suspicion of a violation that has been met with no action in the past. Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea and possibly other states are known by the United Nations and the whole world to have unauthorized stockpiles of nuclear weapons. All of these states signed the NPT (with the exception of North Korea), blatantly violated it and never faced the same crippling sanctions or threats of attack that Iran has (North Korea is again an exception). Additionally, while the aforementioned nations already have alarming nuclear weapons stockpiles, Iran is suspected of potentially preparing for a nuclear option in the future. Not only is their suspected offense laughably less severe, but it is also, according to the NPT and the IAEA, not an actual offense. The IAEA explicitly indicates that there is nothing illegal about having a nuclear weapons capability, which Japan, Argentina, Brazil and a handful of other non-nuclear weapon countries do have. With that, the punishments are not only unjustly targeted, but they also have little legal basis. The assumptions that pundits, newsgroups and politicians have been making also deserve serious scrutiny. The most notable inference that politicians make is that Iran, if allowed to succeed in the development of a nuclear weapon, will use it against Israel. Politicians evidence this assertion by 'quoting' an Ahmadinejad speech in which he ostensibly said, "Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth." But this statement is often misquoted because of an erroneous translation. Ahmadinejad made reference to the importance of fighting the oppressors to Palestinian freedom, but he made no direct comment about physically destroying Israel. The expression 'wipe off the map' is an English one and does not exist in Persian. Some still remain puzzled, though: If Iran is in fact seeking a possible nuclear weapons option for reasons other than to attack Israel, what could they be? Although a tragically small number of politicians recognize it to be so, Iran does have some rational incentives for a nuclear weapons option. The geographic situation of the Islamic Republic in itself gives us a pretty good idea. A pool of nations that have a vast array of nuclear weapons surround Iran. Israel, probably their primary concern, is just to the west and has a huge number of unauthorized nuclear weapons. Pakistan and India, two nations also known to have nuclear weapons, are just southeast of Iran's border. Russia, officially in possession of more nuclear weapons than any other country on earth, is only separated from Iran by Azerbaijan. And finally, China lies relatively close to Iran's northeastern border with Afghanistan. Not only does China have nuclear weapons, but also given that politicians in the United States are threatened by China's growing military prowess, Iran probably has reason to worry too. Although one could make the argument that Iran is justified in pursuing a nuclear weapon, a nuclear Iran is certainly undesirable. Unfortunately, the international community's radical response has completely closed it off from diplomacy with Iran, which means that it has likewise closed itself off from any intelligence concerning the nuclear developments. We consequently resort to often destructively outlandish presumptions about the nature of Iran's nuclear program, which makes it that much harder for the international community to accurately calculate its actions. The accomplishments have been an angrier Iran, which ironically only increases the chances of them using nuclear weapons erratically. The sanctions have done little outside of setting the stage for war, which is becoming ever more likely every day. If the U.S. and the EU want to avoid a war that will cause more harm than good, they need to take a much closer look at the facts and implications regarding the Iran issue.