Hopkins Team

It may be the age of plastic money, plastic explosives and plastic surgery, but here's something you probably hadn't thought of:Plastic batteries.Johns Hopkins University engineers have developed a plastic battery that is as thin as a credit card and even more flexible. The Air Force has been sponsoring the research in hopes of getting a lightweight, cheap and versatile power source for satellites and weapons.But such a product could also have enormous commercial potential, a prospect sure to be boosted by today's announcement that Popular Science magazine deems the battery one of the top 100 new products, technology developments and scientific achievements of the year.

Johns Hopkins has dropped three of its past four contests and fallen to No. 15 in The Sun's rankings. But the Blue Jays team that has struggled to a 6-4 record is not the one that No. 4 Maryland (8-1) is anticipating for Saturday's showdown at Byrd Stadium in College Park. Coach John Tillman pointed out that John Hopkins sprinted to an 11-1 advantage en route to a 15-8 demolition of No. 16 Virginia on March 23 and owned a 10-9 lead with less than two minutes left in regulation before falling, 11-10, in overtime to No. 3 North Carolina.

As far as medical diagnostic devices go, magnetic resonance imaging is tough to beat. The technology, in use less than 20 years, has unquestionably improved the ability of physicians to make accurate diagnoses of a range of diseases affecting organs and other soft tissues, say experts. Now, after almost five years of research, a team of Johns Hopkins University doctors and bioengineers have come up with a way to make MRI even more helpful to medicine and somewhat less arduous for patients.

Owls can rotate their heads a dizzying 270 degrees, allowing them to see what's happening behind them while perched on a tree branch or barn beam. This evolutionary adaptation helps the birds keep their fixed-socket, binocular eyes trained on the scurrying mice and other small prey they hunt. But how exactly do their necks seemingly defy the limitations of bones and blood vessels as they swivel around like a submarine periscope? Fabian de Kok-Mercado, a Johns Hopkins-trained medical illustrator and an owl enthusiast, was curious.

It is not as experienced or airtight as it was two years ago. Back then, the defense was dotted with All-Americans and typically set the tone for a Johns Hopkins men's lacrosse team that went undefeated and won the school's first NCAA title since 1987. This year's Blue Jays defense has been shaped in part by youth, injuries, changing roles, an inspirational comeback story, and an evolution that included some serious stumbles in the early going. And one of the reasons the third-seeded Blue Jays (11-4)

Nursing home residents who suffer from depression have a much higher death rate than do residents in good mental health, but the disorder is seldom diagnosed and treated by their physicians, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine researchers reported yesterday.Dr. Barry W. Rovner, a Hopkins psychiatrist who led the study, said the research shows that too many physicians regard the overriding sadness suffered by many elderly people to be a normal symptom of aging -- rather than a definable, treatable illness that can kill when it is ignored.

The golden '20s are the most enduring literary cliche in the American canon, but for Robert Roy, retired dean emeritus of engineering at Johns Hopkins University, that decade was real life, not fiction.Last year Mr. Roy put the finishing touches on a family memoir -- privately circulated among friends and colleagues -- that tinkles with F. Scott Fitzgerald nostalgia and comments on the ways of life when the gin was in the bathtub and the brokers were in the chips.Included in the memoir is a story about Mr. Roy's heady athlete days.

When two of the great singers of our time, Jose Carreras and Marilyn Horne, sing together tonight at Wolf Trap for the benefit of leukemia-related foundations, the extraordinary concert will have personal significance for me. Twenty-five years ago I was one of the first leukemia marrow-transplant donors.Both singers have volunteered for personal reasons. Miss Horne's father died of leukemia. A marrow transplant in 1987 enabled Mr. Carreras to survive acute lymphoblastic leukemia. A quarter-century ago when my sister contracted this same leukemia, it was a quick death sentence.

IN TWO weeks, the eyes of the world's lacrosse fans will be on Baltimore, the internationally recognized "mecca of lacrosse," the largest event in the history of the sport will be held at Johns Hopkins University's Homewood Field July 16-24.A paid attendance of 70,000 fans is expected to jam Hopkins' newly expanded grandstands for an eight-day tournament featuring teams from the 11 member nations of the International Lacrosse Federation. Joining the defending champion Team USA (boasting a large contingent of local talent)

Things are heating up already for Saturday night's lacrosse rematch between Johns Hopkins and Towson State at Towson's Minnegan Stadium in the NCAA quarterfinals.Hopkins, the No. 5 seed, advanced to that round yesterday by beating No. 12 seed Notre Dame, 15-7, in the first round at Homewood.The Blue Jays were sloppy in spots, but their coach, Tony Seaman, was not concerned."We're playing Saturday," Seaman said, getting right to the heart of the matter.Towson, which beat Hopkins, 14-13, in the final second of play at Homewood nine days ago, is the No. 4 seed.

Scientists who study sleep understand that light has a dark side, because it can interrupt natural rhythms, causing the mood and learning problems that go with lack of rest. Johns Hopkins University researchers have taken the understanding a step further and to a cellular level, finding that exposure to bright light at night appears to create these problems by itself, even apart from sleep patterns. Since the research was published online weeks ago in the journal Nature, biology professor Samer Hattar, who led the research team, has been much in demand as a speaker.

Every year, health organizations spend millions in the developing world attacking the iron-deficiency disorder known as anemia. They pay special attention to pregnant women, a population highly vulnerable to the disease. Every year, though, 115,000 of those women die in childbirth from anemia-related problems. More than 600,000 infants do the same. "We've known for a long time that maternal anemia is one of the great causes of death in mothers and newborns," said Wendy Taylor, director of the Center for Accelerating Impact and Innovation at the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.

Want to see a small-college football program that gets it? Gets its core mission and still is wildly successful? Coached by a guy who doesn't think he's God just because he walks the sideline with a set of headphones and a play chart on Saturdays in the fall? Then come out to Homewood Field on Saturday and watch undefeated Johns Hopkins play St. John Fisher of Rochester, N.Y., in the first NCAA home playoff game in Blue Jays history. Go watch the Jays' terrific quarterback, senior Hewitt Tomlin, the Centennial Conference's Offensive Player of the Year.

He's the program's all-time leading passer and winningest quarterback, but to most on the Johns Hopkins campus, Hewitt Tomlin is just another student with a name usually buried in the school's weekly student newspaper. Most fall Saturdays, the 6-foot-2 Tennessean is found on the football field, taking snaps from All-American center Ed Rodger. A small minority know them as two stars of the school's football team, both four-year starters who are part of one of the best classes the Johns Hopkins football program has ever seen.

While still attending undergraduate school, Dr. Patrick J. Byrne made a promise: If he had the good fortune to go into medicine and become a doctor, he would do something for the underserved. That promise has transitioned from volunteering on medical mission trips each year to establishing his own nonprofit, the Face Forward Foundation. Focused on providing free treatment to correct cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities for children in Nicaragua and other developing countries, the Baltimore-based nonprofit also follows up the surgeries with rehabilitation services provided through a telemedicine initiative.

When No. 11 Johns Hopkins defeated No. 20 Towson, 10-6, Saturday at Johnny Unitas Stadium, the Blue Jays became the first college lacrosse team to win 900 games. It seems like most of them have come against Towson. If there was a year for the Tigers (0-1) to upset Hopkins (1-0), this was the season because the Blue Jays are relying on young talent. But Hopkins outscored Towson 4-0 in the third quarter and that, combined with a Tigers scoring drought that lasted nearly 36 minutes, helped the Blue Jays win their 16th straight against Towson.

Washington College, minus 10 lacrosse players, including seven starters who were suspended for the season last week, was overwhelmed by No. 9 Johns Hopkins, 22-5, yesterday before 3,500 at Homewood Field.The Shoremen (0-1), who play in National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III, were no match for a Division I Johns Hopkins team that led, 8-3, at the end of the first quarter and 13-4 at the half.The only time the game was in doubt was after Washington College's Jed Cronin scored to put the Shoremen ahead, 3-2, with 11 minutes, 11 seconds left in the first quarter.

ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa. -- The end of the latest NCAA tournament run for the Johns Hopkins women's basketball team might have been the least surprising of its past five. Yesterday's 77-53 loss at No. 2 seed Elizabethtown in the second round of the Division III playoffs finished a season in which third-seeded Hopkins achieved more than most had thought possible.That takes the sting off 27 turnovers and a second half that saw Elizabethtown's Blue Jays (25-3) outscore the Hopkins variety 46-27. Carmen Chiles, who scored 15 of her game-high 22 points over the final 16 minutes, paced the victory.

Johns Hopkins safety Michael Milano remembers reading a national magazine article as a sophomore in which the publication jokingly expressed surprise that the school even had a football team. Long known for their prowess at lacrosse, the Blue Jays never created a major buzz in football despite winning five Centennial Conference championships since 2002. All that changed last season, when Johns Hopkins drew plenty of attention during its remarkable run to the NCAA quarterfinals. The increased exposure coincides with high expectations by Blue Jays coaches and players, who will seek to build upon their unprecedented success of a year ago. Hopkins enters the season ranked as high as 15th in the Division III national polls and is the favorite to win its second consecutive conference title and a trip back to the NCAA playoffs.

Walter Cornelius "Neil" Pohlhaus Jr., a retired Realtor and lacrosse coach who had been a member of the fabled 1950 Johns Hopkins champion lacrosse team, died Monday of Parkinson's disease at his North Baltimore home. He was 83. Mr. Pohlhaus, the son of an Alex. Brown & Sons stockbroker and a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised on Wickford Road in Roland Park. After graduating in 1945 from St. Paul's School, Mr. Pohlhaus was drafted into the Navy and was in basic training at the Bainbridge naval training center in Cecil County when the war ended.