New Life For Old Film
For 10 years, in darkened YMCAs and church basements and auditoriums around Baltimore and elsewhere, viewers watched the flickering images of doctors, nurses, patients and staff of The Johns Hopkins Hospital go through the routine of an ordinary day.
   Between 1932, when it was filmed, and the beginning of World War II, what was known as The Johns Hopkins Movie was seen 146 times by more than 30,000 people, giving them a rare behind-the-scenes look at the workings of a teaching hospital. Full story...

Balto. Free University is set to return
Previously relegated to the nostalgic status of "that '70s program," the Baltimore Free University stands poised for a 21st-century revival.
   Johns Hopkins has recently announced its plans to bring back the informal nondegree-granting adult education program that existed from 1968 to 1984. Like its predecessor, the new BFU will feature a wide array of personal enrichment, social issues and practical trade courses.
   The new incarnation will begin this fall and will be administrated through the Center for Social Concern. Bill Tiefenwerth, director of the Center for Social Concern and a major advocate of the BFU's rebirth, says that the 2003 version of the Baltimore Free University will adhere to many of its original founding ideals, providing a no-boundaries, creative approach to education and community building. Full story...

Engineering students solve big challenge faced by patient
After more than four years in a nursing home on a regimen that required him to take up to a dozen pills a day, quadriplegic Robert Arthur Williams sought to live in a more independent setting. "To do that, they told me I'd have to find a way to have my medications dispensed to me whenever I needed them, 24 hours a day," said Williams, a 40-year-old former welder-mechanic who lost the use of his limbs in 1997 when he was struck by a car while crossing a street. For help, Williams turned to the Volunteers for Medical Engineering, a Baltimore organization that provides customized equipment and devices to people with unusual medical problems.
   VME administrators, in turn, referred the request to students in this year's Senior Design Project course in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins. Full story...

FUSE 'brain transplant' secures future of observatory
Scientists and engineers who work with the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer have pulled off a second daring and unprecedented rescue of the satellite observatory from serious guidance problems.
   This time, though, they didn't actually wait for the guidance problems to happen.
   In response to hints of the potential for future new difficulties with FUSE's gyroscopes, which are used to check the satellite's pointing accuracy, researchers redesigned software for three computers aboard FUSE and recently uploaded the new software to the computers.
   The staff of FUSE, operated for NASA by Johns Hopkins, compared the feat to a "brain transplant." Full story...

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