Jul - Aug 2001 Issue

 How viable is the Bush administration’s proposed missile defense? 

James F. Bonk stands in front of the long blackboard in the main chemistry auditorium and, for once, the man who never needs lecture notes does not know what to say. He simply stands there, a wiry, bespectacled man with a fringe of gray hair and a shirt pocket stuffed with pens, shaking his head in astonishment. He’s been had, and he knows it.

In a typical sunny day at the Duke Primate Center, a steady stream of visitors find themselves charmed and captivated by the exotic lemurs that live in its cages and range through its forested open enclosures. Led by volunteer guides, tour groups may witness the long-limbed acrobatic sifaka leap soaring from branch to branch.

In January 1988, Cas Stachelberg ’89 returned to the Duke campus to begin a belated junior year after a seven-month absence spent working at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York’s SoHo district. He came back to school with a considerable amount of new work experience—and with an idea that has evolved into an undergraduate program unlike any other in the country.

Touching Lives By Susan Kauffman

In public schools across the country, there’s a new skill being taught as early as the primary grades: how to use a number-two pencil to fill in the “bubble form,” an answer sheet for multiple-choice tests that can be instantly scanned and scored by computer.

 

 Gun Reactions Editors:Thank you for the thoughtful and balanced article “The Culture of the Gun [March-April 2001].” As a mother of two boys living in a town that treats two to three persons every week for gunshot wounds and loses at least two persons every month from gun trauma, I found Robert Bliwise’s reporting of the complexity in solving the problem of gun violence especially relevant.

 

 

  Duke will receive approximately $4.5 million for research from the estate of William Hane Wannamaker Jr. of Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, a retired engineer and son of one of Duke’s most prominent leaders. Wannamaker died last January. His bequest, among Duke’s largest, is the residual of his estate, and will benefit equally research efforts at the university’s Pratt School of Engineering and the Duke Eye Center.

 We asked several administrators to recommend a novel of campus life.

 To provide information to parents who need to learn about their children’s getting into college, the alumni office headed west for its first Alumni Admissions Forum, held in Santa Clara, California, June 23. Edith Sprunt Toms ‘62, Alumni Affairs assistant director and director of the alumni admissions program, says the idea was to spread the news.

 Alumni Endowed Undergraduate Scholarships, sponsored by the Duke Alumni Association, have been awarded to three members of the Class of 2005. The merit-based, named scholarships, each with an annual, renewable $8,000 stipend, are presented to children of alumni who qualified for financial aid.    

 Researchers have discovered that a small mammal-like reptile that lived 260 million years ago is the first known efficient land vertebrate chewer—able to use a shearing chewing action to break down tough vegetation.

 

 Basketball revelry kicked off the May meeting of the Duke Alumni Association’s board of directors, with guest speaker Johnny E. Dawkins ’86, Duke men’s basketball senior associate head coach, reliving the championship season that was. He showed video highlights from the men’s and women’s basketball season and answered questions.

 Smokers may eventually have another available tool—an oral nicotine solution that can be added to their favorite beverage—to help them kick the habit, according to Eric C. Westman, assistant professor in the department of medicine at Duke Medical Center.

 

  A Duke graduate student has discovered that spiny lobsters make sound using the biological equivalent of a violin—the first time such a mechanism has been found in nature. “Lots of people have tried to explain how these lobsters make sounds, and most of them were wrong,” says Sheila Patek, whose research is reported in a May issue of Nature. “We’ve never seen this before.”