Hopkins No. 1 in funding from National Institutes of Health

For the 10th straight year, the National Institutes of Health annual summary of grants to medical schools ranks The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine the top recipient of federal research dollars in the United States.

The rankings, covering fiscal year 2001 (Oct. 1, 2000, to Sept. 30, 2001), showed that Hopkins earned $334 million in grants, a $33 million increase over 2000's $301 million. Also, Hopkins ranked second among the nation's top medical schools in training grants, with $14 million awarded in this category.

In addition to the positive impact these funds have on advancing medical knowledge and treatment, there is a similar impact on the economic health of the Baltimore metropolitan region, according to Hopkins officials. New health technologies and high-tech firms have been created as a result of these research funds, and hundreds of Hopkins researchers and staff supported by this funding add their purchasing power and tax dollars to the regional economy.

Adjunct professor at Bologna Center is assassinated

Marco Biagi, a top adviser to the Italian government who was an adjunct professor at the university's Bologna Center, was assassinated on March 20 near his home in Bologna. The killing is thought to have been politically motivated. The 51-year-old economist and law professor had drawn up proposals for labor reform and was the third labor consultant to have been assassinated.

Tens of thousands of people gathered in the center of Bologna on Wednesday to pay their respects to Biagi.

"He had taught at the Bologna Center for over 20 years and was a close friend to many of us," wrote Bologna director Robert Evans in an e-mail to colleagues at SAIS, which runs the program in Italy. "Our thoughts go to his wife, Marina, and his two children."

Among the courses Biagi taught were Comparative Industrial and Labor Relations in Western Europe; Industrial Relations, Politics and Government in Advanced Industrial Societies; Comparative Industrial Relations; and Comparative Management of Human Resources.

Until last year Biagi had the protection of armed bodyguards, even when at the center. They had been withdrawn recently.

The Associated Press reported that Biagi was shot as he bicycled home from work and that no claims of responsibility had been made in the killing. A state funeral is being planned.

Community Conversation will look at women in Afghanistan

The fifth Hopkins Community Conversation following the events of Sept. 11 will take place on Friday, March 29.

Margaret Mills, chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Culture at Ohio State University, will give a talk titled "Women in the New Afghanistan: Education and Politics" from 4 to 6 p.m. in 100 Mudd Hall, Homewood campus. For more information, call 410-516-6158.

NTSB official to talk about transportation fatalities

The Role of the National Transportation Safety Board" will be the topic of a lecture at noon on Wednesday, March 27, in Homewood's Shriver Hall.

Bruce A. Magladry, deputy chief of the NTSB's Highway Safety Office, will talk about how the board handles more than 44,000 transportation fatalities each year and the impact those accidents have on American society.

Magladry joined the NTSB in 1998 as a "human factors" specialist investigating and analyzing operator behavior in all modes of transportation. He investigated the Silver Spring MARC train accident and the TWA Flight 800 explosion off Long Island.

This lecture, free and open to the public, is part of the Wednesday Noon Series presented by the Office of Special Events.

Weekend electrical outages planned at Homewood

Electrical service to Krieger, Whitehead and Maryland halls, the MSE Library and the Mattin Center will be interrupted over the weekend in order to complete testing of Homewood's recently replaced south loop electrical switch gear, which serves these buildings.

There will be two or three outages, each lasting from 10 to 20 seconds, between 10:30 p.m. on Friday, March 22, and 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, March 23. Anyone with questions regarding these outages should contact Plant Operations at 410-516-8063.

SAIS to host lecture on sexual exploitation of children

Richard Estes, professor of social work at the University of Pennsylvania, will speak at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at noon on Monday, March 25. The event is hosted by the Protection Project at SAIS.

Estes' lecture topic will be based on his recently published study, "The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the United States, Canada and Mexico."

The study includes documentation of children trafficked into the United States from more than 40 countries and the extensive internal trafficking of children within the United Sates, Canada and Mexico.

The event, which is open to the public, will be held in room 500 at 1717 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., in Washington, D.C. Members of the non-SAIS community may reserve a seat by calling 202-663-5896 or e-mailing Protection_Project@jhu.edu.

Information Security Institute seminar series continues

The Johns Hopkins University's Information Security Institute continues its spring seminar series on Tuesday, March 26, with a panel on proposals for a national identification system and the biometric technologies that would likely underlie such a system. The panel is jointly sponsored by JHUISI and the Applied Physics Laboratory.

Seminar participants Jim Gilmore, former governor of Virginia; James Lucier, senior analyst at Prudential Securities; Harris Miller, president and chief executive officer of Information Technology Association of America; and Marvin Langston, senior vice president at Science Applications International Corp., will discuss the need to balance the growth of a network of identification information as a component of increased homeland security against that network's impact on our daily lives and on our constitutional and civil liberties.

The seminar takes place from 9 a.m. to noon in Parsons Auditorium, which is in Building 1 on the APL campus.

Directions are at www.jhuapl.edu/newsEvents/visitor/direcMap.htm.