FSSHH will return after the holidays. (January sometime)

Yoonju Cho will now be in charge of organizing FSSHH on the Homewood Campus!!!

Please talk to Yoonju or Luke Johnson if you want to volunteer to present or get food/drink for one of the happy hours.

NEXT FSSHH: Holiday Extravaganza!

As the final FSSHH of this semester, and given the season, I think it makes sense to make it a holiday extravaganza. If you have ideas for food/drink fitting for such an event, please let me know: luke.johnson AT jhu.edu

Dec 5, 2008
-- Jacob Koskimaki

Location: Med School Talbot Library (Traylor 709)

Title: A Peptidomic approach to curing breast cancer

Abstract: Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed female malignancy in the United States, proving fatal to nearly 40,000 people in 2007 with 180,000 additional diagnoses. Angiogenesis or neovascularization, the process of new blood vessel formation from pre-existing microvasculature, involves interactions between several types of cells including endothelial cells (ECs), and stromal cells. We previously introduced a novel systematic methodology to identify putative endogenous antiangiogenic peptides and validated these predictions in vitro in human umbilical vein endothelial cell (HUVEC) proliferation and migration assays [1]. These peptides are derived from several protein families including type IV collagen, thrombospondin domain-containing proteins, and CXC chemokines. Based on the results from the in vitro screening, we have evaluated the ability of several peptides selected from the different families to suppress angiogenesis in breast cancer orthotopic xenograft models in severe combined immunodeficient (SCID) mice using MDA-MB-231 human breast cancer cells. We have demonstrated significant suppression of tumor growth in vivo, indicating the potential of these peptides as novel breast cancer therapeutics.

October 24, 2008
-- Tao Yu

Location: Homewood Clark 110

Title: An introduction to Synthetic Biology and the iGEM competition

Abstract: Synthetic biology, a new discipline to "make biology easier to be engineered", is an emerging branch of biology in recent years. Though quite some researchers are participating the research in such a field, synthetic biology is still far from familiar to a broad range of investigators in biology, medicine and engineering scopes. iGEM, which is short for the international Genetically Engineered Machines competition, is an annual undergrad competition aiming to recruit more participants in the community of synthetic biology. Here, I would like to introduce you to some key concepts and typical research in synthetic biology, and share with you the great fun I had in the iGEM competition last year.

October 10, 2008
-- Suneil Hosmane

Location: Med Campus Talbot Library (Traylor 709)

Title: TBA

Abstract: Microfluidics has the potential to uncover mechanisms behind many neurodegenerative diseases by enabling engineers and scientists to recreate the diseased cellular microenvironment. By doing so, a repeatable, efficient, and quantitative approach can be taken to understand the neurobiology of disease in vitro. To this extent, we have developed a novel device platform that merges conventional macro-sized features with microfluidic technology to yield a hybrid device compatible with standard biological protocols. This device allows for numerous experimental modalities through the replication of a single master design using conventional polymethyldisiloxane (PDMS) soft lithography.


Laboratory: Biomedical Instrumentation and Neuroengineering Laboratory
http://www.jhu.edu/nthakor/

September 26 2008
-- Tri Ngo

A first year has stepped up and volunteered to present. How awesome is that?

Title: Stochastic White Matter Tractography

Abstract: Stochastic Tractography is a Bayesian approach for inferring nerve
fiber tract parameters from DTI (Diffusion Tensor Imaging) data. We
use this framework to calculate the posterior probability of the
existence of tracts given our observations. Additionally, the
Bayesian framework allows the algorithm to infer tracts which pass
through regions with uncertain fiber orientations, previously
unreachable by non-Bayesian methods, thereby revealing more details
about structural connectivity.

We have implemented the algorithm into the ITK medical image analysis
toolkit, an open source NIH supported medical image analysis toolkit.
Additionally we created a user interface which allows the program to
be integrated in the popular 3D Slicer medical image visualization
program. Finally we present some potential clinical studies for the
algorithm.
Location: Clark 110 Homewood

September 12 2008
-- Robert Jacques

Location: Med Campus Talbot Library (Traylor 709)

Title: Towards Real-Time Radiation Therapy:GPU Accelerated Superposition/Convolution

Abstract: We demonstrate the use of highly parallel graphics processing units (GPUs) to accelerate the Superposition/Convolution (S/C) algorithm to interactive rates while reducing the number of approximations. S/C first transports the incident fluence to compute the total energy released per unit mass (TERMA) grid. Dose is then calculated by superimposing the dose
deposition kernel at each point in the TERMA grid and summing the contributions to the surrounding voxels. The TERMA algorithm was enhanced with physically correct multi-spectral attenuation and a novel inverse formulation for increased performance, accuracy and simplicity. Dose deposition utilized a tilted poly-energetic inverse cumulative-cumulative kernel, with the novel option of using volumetric mip-maps to approximate solid angle ray-casting. Exact radiological path ray-casting decreased discretization errors. We achieved a speed-up of 34x-98x over a highly optimized CPU implementation.

Full Paper:
http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/hpmiccai/pdf/HPMICCAI2008-V1.pdf


Laboratory: The Computer Integrated Interventional Systems Laboratory
New page: http://ciis.lcsr.jhu.edu/Research
Old page: http://www.cisst.org/

Friday Sept 12 2008 at 5pm, Med Campus Talbot 709

Wow, that was a pretty fantastic FSSHH on Aug 13th. Great turnout -- I'd say 35 people or so, plus tons of first years. It was nice to have a happy hour after so many months off.

Next FSSHH is Friday Sept 12. Robert Jacques is giving the talk. Special thanks to him for volunteering, and thanks to John Issa for getting the refreshments.

STILL NEED VOLUNTEERS!

• We are looking for groups of 1-2 students to sign up to get the food
  and drinks for each week.
• NEED SPEAKERS! (20-30 minute informal talk) -- see schedule at right