Published by the Students of Johns Hopkins since 1896
November 1, 2024

Science & Technology



COURTESY OF SAULEH SIDDIQUI

Siddiqui’s lab focuses on cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Lab spotlight: Sauleh Siddiqui’s MODL

With his background, Sauleh Siddiqui, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Hopkins, could have joined the Mathematics, Economics or Public Policy departments. But none of these fields satisfied all three of his interests: math, society and problem-solving.


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PTSD patients who pursue treatment preferences have better outcomes.

A choice in treatment helps those with PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects about 7.7 million American adults every year, according to PTSD United, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and providing resources for sufferers of PTSD. Characterized by nightmares, flashbacks and frightening thoughts, PTSD is a disorder that develops in people who have experienced a shocking, scary or dangerous event. 


Treatment for resistant cancers found

Breast cancer is the second most common form of diagnosed cancer for women in the United States and is capable of affecting both men and women. In recent years, increasing breast cancer awareness has resulted in higher survival rates and lower death rates associated with the condition. 


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Pando, a colony of aspens with one massive underground root system, has been shrinking.

The most massive organism on Earth is shrinking

The most massive organism on earth is not, as one might expect, a blue whale or a giant sequoia but a forest of quaking aspens. Pando, consisting of around 47,000 individual trunks spread across 106 acres, is a clonal colony whose source is a single male tree. The trunks are genetically identical and share a massive underground root system.



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Sponges are one of the simplest multicellular organisms found on Earth.

Scientists discover traces of world’s oldest sponge

From a cloud of dust came a planet, and on that planet came life. Life leaves its mark on Earth in the form of traditional fossils and trace fossils such as organic material, allowing scientists to study organisms that have been extinct for millions of years. A recent study has found evidence of multicellular life thriving on Earth up to 660 million years ago, 60 million years before what scientists previously believed.


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The UN predicts that current efforts cannot curb effects of climate change.

United Nations releases climate change report

The discussions surrounding climate change have been heating up, so to speak. A recent report from United Nations (UN) scientists predicts that current efforts to curb global warming are not enough to prevent climate change from reaching dangerous levels. Only drastic action might be able to prevent a global crisis that may occur as early as 2040. 


CRISPR technology can be used to relocalize DNA

At first sight, a cell’s DNA may look like a jumbled piece of string; however, it is actually highly organized. Through the use of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR), a gene-editing tool, researchers have discovered that the location of DNA is as vital as the sequence of base pairs in regards to how parts of the genome work.


Genetic ancestry sites may help solve crimes

Your Ancestry.com DNA report could help put your delinquent brother behind bars. The ability to utilize data in genetic ancestry databases to determine the identities of criminals is no longer something of science fiction. Investigators recently used DNA from a free online ancestry database to track down the infamous Golden State Killer, the man who killed 12 people and raped 45 women across California between 1976 and 1986.


COURTESY OF CHAZ FIRESTONE

Chaz Firestone is the head of the Perception and Mind Lab at Hopkins.

Professor uses Tetris to study human vision

There is an old saying in Korea: If your body is worth a thousand, your eyes are worth nine hundred.  As this phrase implies, visual perception is a very important part of our daily lives, even more than we may know. Vision dominates how we perceive the world, taking up more parts of our brain than any other human function. Chaz Firestone, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Hopkins, studies vision in the Perception and Mind Lab.


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Mosasaurs lived in the same time period as tyranosaurus.

Orca whales may hunt the same way mosasaurs did

Until Jurassic World brought the mosasaur back to life on the big screen, the gigantic sea predator had been extinct for 65 million years, since the Cretaceous period. Mosasaurs were once the apex predators of the sea, and a recent study shows they may have hunted like the modern-day apex predator, the orca whale.


Wrap up: the latest in technology...

Google Maps supports real-time route sharing  The top app for navigation on the App Store, Google Maps recently added live location sharing support for iOS. You can now use your iPhone to reveal live location, estimated time of arrival and route with select contacts. These new functions are also available in third-party apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Apple’s native Messages, among others.



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Supernovas are formed from the abrupt collapse of stars in the universe.

Ultra-stripped stars lead to binary neutron stars

Over the past few decades, there has been an explosion of interest in what lies beyond our planet, our solar system and even our galaxy. What we know is that there is a plethora of phenomena that occur outside our limits of exploration for which we have no explanations.


 
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Once only available for children and young adults, Gardasil 9 is now approved for older ages.

HPV vaccine is approved for a greater age range

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the prevalence of genital HPV for adults aged 18-59 is 45.2 percent, making it the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States. Certain high-risk strains of these viruses are responsible for almost all cases of cervical cancer and 95 percent of anal cancers. 



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Therapeutic cancer vaccine is a commonly used treatment at BKI.

Scientists develop new immunotherapy

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to James P. Allison from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Tasuku Honjo from Kyoto University for their discovery of the inhibition of negative immune regulation to aid in cancer therapy. 


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The soil composition on Mars is different from what is found on Earth.

The experimentation of growing plants on Mars

It feels like this horse has long since been beaten to death — when are we going to finally land humans on Mars? It’s been a lifetime since the idea was first entertained, but so far the closest we’ve gotten is Matt Damon celebrating potatoes in The Martian. 


Three women who battled environmental issues

Throughout history, women have played a critical role in confronting environmental crises. Many had to fight tirelessly to highlight the environmental problems they studied, often enduring gender-based critiques of both their personal and professional lives.


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