Johns Hopkins Gazette: February 20, 1996


Newsbriefs

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Try the lacrosse facts trivia line on JHUniverse     

     Who was "Chicken Head"? What is "Ach du Lieber Augustine"?
What caused the riot of 1947?

     And what do all of the above--plus fried chicken livers,
Italian food and bananas--have to do with Johns Hopkins lacrosse?

     Internet-savvy Blue Jay fans can find out how much they know
about the 114-year history of lacrosse at Hopkins by taking Johns
Hopkins Magazine's interactive trivia quiz on the World Wide Web.

     Adapted from the February issue of the magazine, the quiz
can be found at .

     Fans are invited to fashion their own Hopkins lax trivia
questions and submit them via an e-mail link on the quiz
homepage. The best will be chosen to appear in a future issue of
the magazine and in an updated version of the on-line quiz.

     The quiz homepage also includes links to other lacrosse
sites on the World Wide Web.
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New evidence supports changes in sea water

     A Johns Hopkins University geochemist has presented new
evidence supporting a controversial concept--that the composition
of seawater changes drastically over geologic time.

     The findings represent a sharp departure from tradition;
conventional thinking on the subject is that the composition of
ocean water has not changed much since the dawn of life on Earth,
said Lawrence Hardie, a professor of earth and planetary
sciences.

     His calculations, however, have led to a startling
conclusion: only once before has seawater had the same
composition that it does today, and that was 550 million years
ago. More important, Hardie believes he has discovered the key
chemical mechanism behind the changes and has developed a model
to predict the seawater composition at any given time in Earth's
distant past. The age of dinosaurs, for example, or far more
ancient times, long before vertebrate life walked the planet.

     The research will be detailed in a scientific paper in the
March issue of Geology, published by the Geological Society of
America.
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Physicists may be able to control range of 'chaos'

     Theoretical physicists have made an important discovery
about controlling "chaotic systems," unpredictable phenomena that
have confounded scientists in a wide range of disciplines, from
meteorology to mechanical engineering, electronics to
neuroscience.

     Even though the fluctuating behavior of a given system may
seem random, these fluctuations are, in fact, part of an overall
pattern that can be analyzed and understood. Several years ago
scientists showed that chaotic systems could be controlled, that
is, made non-chaotic, by manipulating certain variables relating
to the particular system.

     Now Ernst Niebur, an assistant professor of neuroscience at
the Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute, and Heinz Schuster, a
professor of theoretical physics at the University of Kiel in
Germany, have taken that idea a step further. They have devised
equations to pinpoint the controlling mechanism: a chaotic system
can only be controlled if the parameters to be changed fall
within a triangular region on a graph. Adjusting any variables
outside the triangle is futile and fails to produce non-chaos.
The triangle only applies to two-dimensional systems. For a
three-dimensional system, the parameters must fall within a
somewhat twisted pyramidal shape. And for higher dimensions,
human intuition cannot imagine the complex shapes of the control
region, but it is possible to compute it, Niebur said.

     A scientific paper about the findings, published Jan. 15 in
Physical Review Letters, was written by Niebur, Schuster and
colleagues at Ohio University.


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School of Nursing offers master's degree program

     The School of Nursing will offer a master's degree
completion program for certified nurse practitioners that will be
available in the fall of 1996. Completion of the program will
lead to a master's degree in nursing. Graduates will be eligible
to be credentialed as either clinical nurse specialists or nurse
practitioners according to the American Nurses Association
definition.

     The 41-credit program is geared toward nurse practitioners
who have a bachelor's degree in nursing and are certified by
either the American Nurses Credentialing Center or the National
Board of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners and Nurses.

     The program is primarily comprised of classroom work.
Students can receive up to 11 credits for providing a portfolio
of previous clinical work and six credits through challenge
exams. 

     Both part-time and full-time courses of study are available.
For information, call the School of Nursing's Admissions Office
at (410)955-7548.

     According to program director Judi Vessey, the master's
completion program can provide new career opportunities for nurse
practitioners. "Hopkins is one of the first universities in the
country to provide a streamlined entry toward a master's degree.
Many nursing positions now require a master's degree, and it is
also necessary if someone wants to teach or continue with
doctoral study. In addition, some state legislatures require a
master's degree in order to be licensed as an advanced practice
nurse."

     Vesey adds that the program is open to adult, pediatric and
family nurse practitioners, and it is anticipated that the
majority of students in the program will be skilled clinicians
with approximately 10 years of experience.
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