Mar - Apr 2006 Issue

When it comes to the diversity of soil bacteria, the otherwise species-rich Amazon is more like a desert, while the arid desert is a teeming microbial Amazon, Duke researchers have found. Their first-ever, continental-scale genetic survey of soil bacteria revealed that the primary factor that seems to govern the diversity of soil bacteria is soil pH. The acidic soils of tropical forests harbor fewer bacterial species than the neutral soils of deserts.

The Duke Alumni Association is requesting recommendations and nominations for membership on its board of directors.The DAA board comprises volunteers who advise the staff of the Office of Alumni Affairs on programs provided for current and future Duke graduates. Members represent Trinity College, Engineering, and all other schools, including graduate and professional.

It was two months after he'd finished college and Andrew Skurka decided to walk across the continent.

Six years ago, Peter Feaver, Alexander F.

Charles D. Thompson

 Action: Mike Silver, left, cues actors Chelsea Eche

Older Americans enjoy good health for a longer period than previously realized, and many factors that compromise health in elderly people can be modified to maintain their health, according to recent findings from a multi-university study led by researchers at Duke Medical Center. Consequently, the researchers say, physicians should understand that long spans of illness and disability are not necessarily part of normal aging.

In an effort to make it easier to monitor working conditions, the university has agreed to reduce the number of factories authorized to produce merchandise that carries the Duke logo.

One of the academic year's most compelling speakers was George Packer, author of The Assassins' Gate. In the book, Packer traces America's involvement in Iraq, where he made four tours on assignment for The New Yorker.

As a twenty-six-year-old cub reporter assigned to the "women's pages" at the High Point Enterprise, Betsy Gamble Hansen attempted to knock out the glass ceiling by applying for the police beat.

The Fuqua School of Business has created the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation to advance scholarship and provide a comprehensive framework for entrepreneurial education. The center will also expand and support the existing M.B.A. Program for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and support the university's related efforts to spawn new ventures and transfer technology to the commercial sector.

Southern ExposureI enjoy the mini-profiles very much, but Greg Veis did make one remark about the distinguished South Carolinian that rankled ["Herb Kirsh '49, fourteen years in office," November-December 2005]. (He must be very young, with no roots of any kind in the South.)

 Buck's daughter Doris: laying Chapel cornerstone

When Abhijit Prabhu '02 returned to Duke's campus for a visit last November, he was surprised by how much things had changed in his absence. "It was clear to me," he told a group assembled to dedicate the new Bostock Library, "that this is not the Duke I went to. My sister graduated in May, and this isn't even the Duke she went to."

Not long after Conservatives gained power in Great Britain under Margaret Thatcher, Eddie Chambers, a young, black art student, tore a print of the Union Jack into pieces and reassembled it in the shape of a swastika. The result was a powerful--and controversial--statement about what he saw as the appropriation of the country by racist ideologues. In the work, Destruction of the National Front, the Union Jack/swastika occupied the first of four panels.

 Francis Brooke was still asleep in Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood when one of his houseboys came running in, shouting about a commotion on the street outside. It was 10:30 on a Thursday morning, and Brooke had spent the previous night with Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress.

Last fall, as he prepared to take on the legal case of a lifetime, Eric Rothschild paid a visit to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. His interest centered on a new exhibit on Charles Darwin.

The new generation of clinical cardiology CT scanners are extraordinary, producing detailed three-dimensional X-ray images of the heart that capture it in mid-beat. Now, Duke radiologists have built a CT scanner capable of imaging tiny mouse hearts 3,000 times smaller than a human heart and that beat ten times as fast.

View of Amsterdam, ca.

Duke has strengthened its policy for student-athletes who test positive for steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. The new policy states that any student-athlete who tests positive for anabolic steroids, blood doping, or masking agents will be suspended from athletic participation for one year. A second offense would result in loss of eligibility.

Coyne's Untitled #1111 (Little Ed's Daughter Margaret)

 Jon Gardiner.

Jawad: "free press" for hire in Iraq. Photo: Megan Morr.

A team from Duke Law School emerged victorious from the National Moot Court Competition, held in New York in February--the first time Duke law students have won the competition.

 Belafonte: singing only King's praises

Elizabeth Catlett, Cartas, 1986. Lithograph, 28 x 19 inches. © Elizabeth Catlett.

 Illustration: Adam Niklewicz

Clay Taliaferro is on leave this year from his position teaching dance at Duke. But he's not taking it easy. Taliaferro, age sixty-five, returned to the stage in February to dance the male lead in "The Moor's Pavane" with the JosÈ LimÛn Dance Company. The performance reunited him with the company in which he was a principal dancer for more than a decade in the 1970s and early 1980s. "I don't think there should be a cut-off time," Taliaferro says.

When we count, we may mumble "one, two, three ..." to ourselves, but is language really essential to number perception? It's an intriguing question, because it pertains to how deeply ingrained numerical perception is in primate evolution. By testing how well monkeys compare numbers, Duke neuroscientists have found that the animals do semantically perceive numbers as we do, without language.

Brother Men: The Correspondence of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Herbert T. Weston By Edgar Rice Burroughs and Herbert T. Weston. Edited by Matt Cohen.

Duke is set to create a new Islamic studies center that will offer a unique certificate program for undergraduates, as well as expand partnerships with universities in Muslim-majority countries. The center's principal focus will be undergraduate education, says Bruce Lawrence, the Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Professor of religion. Lawrence, an Islamicist, will serve as the center's inaugural director.

Nominations for the Distinguished Alumni Award, the highest honor presented by the Duke Alumni Association, are being accepted for 2006. The annual award is made to alumni who have distinguished themselves through contributions to their field of work, in service to Duke University, or in the betterment of humanity. All living alumni, other than current Duke employees, are eligible for consideration.

 Pointers: women's golf coach Brooks with

I'm coming to the end of my two-year investment-banking analyst position, and I'm totally confused. I have a job offer from one of my clients and the opportunity to go to a good business school, but what I'd really like to do is run a nonprofit organization.

Capers McDonald B.S.E.

Jo Rae Wright, professor of cell biology, medicine, and pediatrics at Duke, has been named dean of the Graduate School and vice provost, effective July 1. She succeeds the current dean, Lewis Siegel, who is retiring after fifteen years in the post.

Perfect moments are created one detail at a time," according to Laura Weatherly's wedding-planning website. Perfect murders are, too--including bumping off the mother of the bride (MOB, in wedding-planner speak.)