Category: Research
They were what they ate: Pre-humans ate only forest foods
July 9, 2012
You are what you eat, as the saying goes, and that seems to have been as true 2 million years ago, when pre-human relatives were swinging through the trees and racing across the savannas of South Africa, as it is today. A study published June 27 in the journal Nature reveals that Australopithecus sediba, an […]
Researchers recommend steps to improve global road safety
July 9, 2012
Road traffic crashes kill more than 1.2 million people each year, with 90 percent of those fatalities occurring in low- and middle-income countries. Yet despite a growing body of data to support effective and proven interventions, proportional funding for implementation in developing countries has not been forthcoming, leaving a gap between evidence and action. A […]
Immune system ‘circuitry’ that kills malaria in mosquitoes ID’d
July 9, 2012
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute have, for the first time, determined the function of a series of proteins within the mosquito that transduce a signal that enables the mosquito to fight off infection from the parasite that causes malaria in humans. Together, these proteins known as immune deficiency, or Imd, pathway signal […]
‘Huntington’s in a dish’ created to enable search for treatment
July 9, 2012
Johns Hopkins researchers, working with an international consortium, say they have generated stem cells from skin cells from a person with a severe, early-onset form of Huntington’s disease and turned them into neurons that degenerate just like those affected by the fatal inherited disorder. By creating “HD in a dish,” the researchers say they have […]
Study: Improve care, reduce high cost for Medicare beneficiaries
July 9, 2012
It’s well-known that a relatively small percentage of chronically ill patients accounts for a disproportionate amount of health care spending. Now, a multicenter study led by Johns Hopkins researcher Bruce Leff might provide insights into how to cut Medicare costs while improving health care for older adults suffering from chronic health conditions. Results of the […]
Found: Pathway for origin of most common form of brain tumor
July 9, 2012
Johns Hopkins researchers say they have discovered one of the most important cellular mechanisms driving the growth and progression of meningioma, the most common form of brain and spinal cord tumor. A report on the discovery, published in the journal Molecular Cancer Research, could lead the way to the discovery of better drugs to attack […]
Citizen science: Thousands tested their ‘gut’ sense for numbers
July 9, 2012
A first-of-its-kind study using the World Wide Web to collect data from more than 10,000 study subjects ages 11 to 85 found that humans’ inborn “number sense” improves during school years, declines during old age and remains linked throughout the entire lifespan to academic mathematics achievement. The study, led by psychologist Justin Halberda of The Johns […]
Next front in world AIDS battle: Stretching use of anti-HIV drugs
July 9, 2012
A Johns Hopkins expert in the drug treatment of HIV disease and AIDS is spearheading an international effort to radically shift the manufacturing and prescribing of combination therapies widely credited in the last decade for keeping the disease in check for 8 million of the 34 million infected people worldwide. “We can do more with less […]
Microsorting device could catch roaming cancer cells
June 25, 2012
In life, we sort soiled laundry from clean, ripe fruit from rotten. Two Johns Hopkins engineers say that they have found an easy way to use gravity or simple forces to similarly sort microscopic particles and bits of biological matter—including circulating tumor cells. In the May 25 online issue of Physical Review Letters, German Drazer, […]
JHU’s Bennett and WMAP team awarded Gruber Cosmology Prize
June 25, 2012
The Gruber Foundation announced June 20 that the 2012 Cosmology Prize will be awarded to Johns Hopkins University Professor Charles L. Bennett and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe space mission science team that he led. Bennett and the WMAP team are being recognized by the foundation for their transformative study of an ancient light dating […]