Scientists

For Charles A. "Karl" Hibbitts and 11 other scientists who hope to fly into space with their experiments someday, the path out of the Earth's atmosphere starts in Philadelphia. Hibbitts, a research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab near Laurel, and his fellow space cadets spent two days last week at a private space training center near Philly getting a taste of the rigors and risks of a quick shot, 350,000 feet up to the edge of space and back. One passed out briefly in a hypobaric chamber that simulated aircraft depressurization at 18,000 feet.

Something is killing the honey bees of Maryland. Close to 60 percent of the managed hives died last fall and over the winter - about twice the national average, according to the state bee inspector and local keepers. "I had a healthy hive that produced 50 pounds of honey last year, and we were anticipating another great year," said Stephen Christianson, a Mount Washington beekeeper of three years. "Then, they were just gone. It took my breath away. " Some blame inexperience on the part of the beekeepers, most of whom tend their hives as a hobby, coupled with a bad winter.

Comparing their invention to a bar-code scanner at a grocery store, scientists at the Johns Hopkins Oncology Center have developed a new method to rapidly detect genes and measure their activity in cells.The technology -- which melds new computer software, new techniques and equipment already found in advanced laboratories -- can scan about 1,000 genes in a few hours, gathering information that might otherwise take years to collect.Dr. Kenneth W. Kinzler, an oncologist who co-directed the project, said the technology is a research tool that should give scientists a sophisticated view of how genes interact in cells to cause and fight disease -- or create specialized organs and tissues.

Dr. Paul S. Lietman, a retired Johns Hopkins professor of medicine, pharmacology, molecular sciences and pediatrics, died of congestive heart failure April 20 at his Ruxton home. He was 79. "He was a gifted educator and was beloved by generations of Hopkins medical students," said Dr. Myron L. Weisfeldt, the medical school's chair and director of the Department Of Medicine. "He relished mentoring young colleagues and single-handedly recruited numerous young physicians. " He worked on drug development for HIV infections and herpes and was a pioneer in antiviral treatments, his medical colleagues said.

A monthly chance to learn from scientists who study the heavens at the Space Telescope Science Institute takes place tomorrow. The institute, on the campus of Johns Hopkins University at 3700 San Martin Drive, is hosting its regular lecture event at 8 p.m. Scientist Marcel Haas will give a lecture titled “ Growing Galaxies in Supercomputers .” If you can't make it, the Bloomberg telescope is also open to the public Friday evenings,...

Half a century ago, a nearby cluster of stars appeared to astronomers as a single glowing ball of gas. As recently as 15 years ago, scientists realized it was in fact a cluster of stars but were convinced they all must have formed at the same time and with the same composition. Now astronomers at Baltimore's Space Telescope Science Institute have found evidence that one cluster may actually be two, one a million years older than the other, in the process of merging. The clusters are 170,000 light years from Earth in an area known as the Tarantula Nebula.

Florence P. Haseltine knows the power of scientists meeting face to face. The former researcher at the National Institutes of Health notes a list of milestones achieved through networking and collaboration at conferences, such as the deliberations that led to advances that helped slow the spread of HIV. Now Haseltine, former director of the Center for Population Research of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Rockville, worries...

No one at the Johns Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth was quite sure what to expect this week when they sat down in a stuffy conference room to host the center's first-ever online kids' "Webinar," on the H1N1 flu pandemic, dubbed Swine Online '09. As it turned out, 55 youngsters logged on from around the country - one as young as 8. And by instant message and telephone, they lobbed 115 questions at two Hopkins epidemiologists....

WASHINGTON -- A Moscow center offering useful work for former Soviet weapons scientists to prevent them from selling their skills abroad is on the way to starting in June, a key State Department official said yesterday.The $75 million International Science and Technology Center will serve as a sort of "dating service," matching scientists' knowledge with peaceful government and private-sector research projects.A high priority, said Robert Gallucci, the State Department official in charge of the project, will be research into nuclear-plant safety and management of nuclear waste.

Scientists from the Smithsonian Institution and Maryland officials spent yesterday examining the carcass of a 10-ton humpback whale that washed ashore Thursday along Assateague Island National Seashore south of Ocean City.Strandings of large whales occur every year or two on beaches in Maryland and Virginia. The scientists were taking advantage of this week's find to examine an intact carcass and learn more about the species, said Jack Kumer, a wildlife biologist with the National Park Service at Assateague.

Spring stirs pollen, and also dust - high-flying dust that's blown thousands of miles to reach North America in greater amounts than scientists have known before, with potential impact on the climate and air quality. Mineral dust rises from dry expanses in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, rides upper atmospheric winds for days across the Pacific Ocean to the West Coast of the United States and beyond. More than two miles up, it can reach Maryland, where scientists at College Park, Greenbelt and Catonsville have been tracking its global travels with satellite-based instruments in a way they say is more accurate and covers a longer period of time than previous studies.

The White House proposed a sweeping new initiative Tuesday to map the individual cells and circuits that make up the human brain, a project that will give scientists a better understanding of how a healthy brain works and how to devise better treatments for injuries and diseases. "There is this enormous mystery waiting to be unlocked," said President Barack Obama of the project unveiled at a White House ceremony packed with scientists. Called the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative, the program would be funded with an initial $100 million from the president's fiscal 2014 budget, which the White House is to release next week.

It's been widely observed that there aren't enough females entering the fields of science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, as they're popularly lumped together. That perception is much more than an anecdotal one. Men outnumber women in STEM careers in the United States by 3 to 1, according to the National Math and Science Initiative, which promotes educational programs to increase America's competitiveness. Fewer than 15 percent of American engineers are women, although women comprise 48 percent of the nation's workforce, NMSI data reveals.

Crabbing season officially begins in Maryland today, but the Chesapeake Bay's blue crabs apparently haven't gotten the word. My colleague Richard Gorelick reports that watermen, seafood dealers, restaurateurs and state natural resource officials all believe that chilly bay water temperatures lately could mean a meager harvest for now. "The cold temperatures are likely to keep early catches low," Brenda Davis, blue crab program manager of...

- The volunteers of the Maryland Amphibian and Reptile Atlas project leave no log unrolled, no stone unturned in their quest to document the state's dirt dwellers. When the earth is moist after a soaking rain and the temperatures whisper spring, the herp patrol - short for herpetology - spreads out in search of slithering, hopping, plodding critters along the fringes of farm fields, sunning themselves on pond rocks and making new burrows at the edges of vernal pools. These amateur census takers aren't picky.

Albert Einstein was 26 when he published his Special Theory of Relativity; James Watson, at age 25, explained the structure of DNA. Here in Baltimore, many great medical achievements were developed by early-career researchers at Johns Hopkins. "The young do not know enough to be prudent," said Pearl Buck. "They attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation. " Today's young American scientists are no less inspired but are discouraged by a perceived lack of opportunity after long, grueling years of training.

Baltimore will become one of the brainiest places in America in February 1996, when the city will be the site of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.Up to 5,500 mathematicians, biologists, archaeologists and others will theorize, postulate and ponder at the Convention Center and downtown hotels during the 146-year-old association's annual convention, scheduled for Feb. 8-13 of that year."It's a very exciting opportunity because it brings some of the very best scientists in the United States to the city," said Dr. Rita R. Colwell, president of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute and president-elect of the association, one of the world's largest scientific organizations.

So now it's confirmed that South Korean stem cell king Hwang Woo Suk had been lying all along - not just about the illicit manner in which the women's eggs used in his experiments were obtained, but about his major claim to have successfully created clonal human embryos in the first place. He lied to the news media, the public, his government and patients hoping for cures. I heard Mr. Hwang speak just over a year ago at a forum at the United Nations. He was lauded by the scientists present as the Galileo of stem cell research.

Florence P. Haseltine knows the power of scientists meeting face to face. The former researcher at the National Institutes of Health notes a list of milestones achieved through networking and collaboration at conferences, such as the deliberations that led to advances that helped slow the spread of HIV. Now Haseltine, former director of the Center for Population Research of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Rockville, worries...

When I was a Ph.D. student at Yale, I dreamed of working as a university professor, directing a research laboratory, and training students of my own. I have been a professor for a little over four years now. Of the lessons I have learned in this time, the one I have taken most to heart is that scientists at American universities spend far more time dreaming of research than actually carrying it out. By "dreaming," I mean that university scientists design...