Bucks from pollution Some public health dollars [“The Buck Goes Here,” Spring 2010] should go to making bucks out of our massive, ever-expanding mess of organic wastes and sewage solids, rather than letting those messes get out of hand, polluting our biosphere and being allowed to re-emit the carbon dioxide that nature has so kindly […]

When associate editor Dale Keiger set out to write about Rebecca Skloot’s New York Times best seller, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, he got a few quizzical looks. After all, the book—which tells the story of Lacks’ treatment for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital and how the so-called HeLa cells taken from her […]

Mnemonics are aids to memory and take many forms. Some are used by students cramming for exams. The more outrageous—or outright indecent—the easier they are to remember. (If you can’t even recall the mnemonic, you’re in deep trouble.) For this column, I’ve selected (or crafted) relatively inoffensive versions. Check your answers A. Try to identify […]

The first piano Dasha Bukhartseva ever played was an old, poorly tuned upright that sat in her aunt’s living room in Vishniaki, a small village in Ukraine. Barely a toddler, she’d waddle over to it, open the lid, and bang away at the keys for hours. At age 8, having moved with her mother, Natasha, […]

Homewood undergraduates stepped up to celebrate the Johns Hopkins legacy—and the big shoes left for them by generations of alumni—during the first-ever Student Philanthropy Education Week.  As the campus prepared for alumni to return for Reunion 2010, the Student Alumni Society sponsored a week of daily events aimed at building awareness of alumni giving, including […]

Doug Woodring, SAIS ’96 Far, far away from any major landmass, the deep waters of the remote North Pacific are expansive and blue, and full of trash. Plastic bottles, abandoned fishing nets, unmoored buoys, the occasional stuffed toy—a so-called “plastic vortex” of floating debris scattered over thousands of square miles. Much of the plastic has […]

By going green, Davis Bookhart and Lawrence Kilduff aim to cut university emissions by 50 percent by 2025 while saving the institute some green to the tune of $10.3 million per year.

Karen Evans Moratz, Peab ’84 Even before Karen Evans Moratz had finished writing the book Flute For Dummies, critics were scoffing at the idea of a simplified flute manual for such a demanding instrument. They called it the literary equivalent of fast food. Moratz, who’s been the principal flutist with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra (ISO) […]

Karl Hibbitts’ pre-adventure adventure made him dizzy and nauseous, forced him to try and move the blood in his legs and torso up toward his woozy head, and spun him around like a top. And, he claims, he loved every minute of it. During a two-day simulation experience earlier this year, Hibbitts, a senior staff […]

The hardships of a longtime friend have stayed with Tristan Rhodes for decades. The friend is a woman whose life took a dramatic turn after she came out as a lesbian to her family. “She is a great thinker and an extremely talented writer who would have been a great literary talent,” Rhodes says. “She […]