Welcome

Welcome to HHMI's virtual exhibit, Vital Signs: Understanding Cardiovascular Diseases. It has been adapted from the museum-quality exhibit that complemented our 1998 Holiday Lectures on Science series. Each year HHMI hosts a 2-day lecture event for high school students at its headquarters in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Drs. Richard P. Lifton and Christine E. Seidman, both HHMI investigators exploring the genetic basis of disease, delivered the 1998 lectures, "Of Hearts and Hypertension: Blazing Genetic Trails." We hope you will find the experience of this virtual exhibit to be rich and compelling and that it will serve as a valuable resource to you for science research projects or as a source of background information about cardiovascular disease.

Navigating Through the Exhibit

There are two ways in which you can move around the virtual exhibit.

1. On the top left window, click and drag the mouse (as you hold down the mouse button). When the cursor changes to a hand, click the mouse button to view information about the object or jump to another section of the exhibit (called nodes).

2. On the bottom left window, click on the colored circles, which represent the sections (or nodes) of the exhibit. At each node, clicking on most display panels or windows in the virtual reality (VR) window will bring up the descriptions and the detailed views of the exhibit items.

For additional help navigating the virtual exhibit, click on the question mark icon in the top left window.

• Introduction
• What is Cardiovascular Disease?
• Cardiomyopathies and Hypertension
• Credits

At the purple node (), you can find information about diagnostic technologies.

You can also watch a video tour of the exhibit, or click on the "Video Tour" icon in the legend to your left at any time.