May - Jun 2010 Issue

Twelve large ceramic pots adorn the lawn in front of the Nasher Museum of Art, the work of renowned local artist Mark Hewitt. Sarah Schroth, Nancy Hanks curator at the Nasher, who arranged the exhibition, says she intends for the patterned and salt-glazed pots to create an organic transition between the museum's modernist edifice and the surrounding woods.

Chaos in Cameron: As the shot clock expires, the reality of a national title takes hold. Credit: Megan Morr

Early in February, on a weekend when a massive snowstorm held much of the commerce and travel in the Northeast at a standstill, Duke students and alumni gathered on campus for the annual Fannie Mitchell Career Conference.

“We’re in the business of knowing a good story,” says David Jarmul, Duke’s associate vice president for news and communications. Jarmul and his colleague Camille Jackson, who had been covering the university’s involvement in Haiti, knew they had a good story in graduate student Julia Gaffield.

Credit: Kathleen Murphy Jones

Proof positive: Recently discovered documents link Trinity College to charita

In 2006, children sitting at dinner tables across America rejoiced. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had announced a multistate outbreak of E. coli in several brands of spinach and recommended that it not be purchased or served.

In April, the audience at Duke's Page Auditorium was treated to the sounds of the internationally acclaimed Kronos Quartet, which performed the world première of "String Quartet No. 1." The piece, arranged with the Kronos Quartet in mind, was commissioned by Duke Performances and composed by Grammy-winning composer Maria Schneider.

Duke researchers have devised a method to dry and preserve proteins in glassy microbeads that seem to retain the molecules' properties while potentially making them easier to use in medication.

Work in progress: architectural rendering of residential addition.

The ride between East and West campuses on a Duke bus takes about seven minutes, plenty of time for a quick chat, a last-minute study session, and now, a poem. Thanks to the efforts of Deborah Pope, professor of English, and Beverly Meek, an assistant in the arts outreach and communication program, the interior of twenty-five buses are now adorned with excerpts from well-known poems chosen by Pope's students.

 

Day in the life: Waters found beauty in the mundane—a girl with a Coke bottle.

 The film version of Duke professor Timothy Tyson's best-selling history and memoir, Blood Done Sign My Name, opened nationwide in February, marking the culmination of a long process of adapting the work for the silver screen.

Kara DioGuardi clearly remembers her initial reaction when the producers of American Idol asked her to appear on last season’s final episode wearing only a bikini. “I said no!” recalls DioGuardi ‘93, one of the four judges on the TV talent-show phenomenon. “Take my clothes off in front of 30 million people? What are you, nuts?” As anyone who watches the show knows, she did end up baring almost all, a move that was cheered as brave by some and derided as desperate by others.

 Eye on history: Gaffield examines reproduction of declaration. Credit: Brownie Harris.Where to find national solace in the midst of national misery? Julia Gaffield has an answer: in history.

 I left for Haiti five days after the earthquake.

 On a typical Thursday afternoon in March, nearly every seat in the waiting room of the Duke Mohs Surgery Unit is full. Patients, most of them past the age of sixty, sport white gauze bandages on eyes, noses, cheeks, or foreheads.

Duke faculty members voted unanimously in March to create an open-access digital archive of their scholarly articles, a move intended to make research readily available to the public and to streamline the way it is archived at the university.

        

A key reason heart attacks are so dangerous is that they kill heart muscle cells. In humans, these cells have a limited ability to regenerate, so scar tissue builds up, making it more difficult for the heart to circulate blood.

Cassone panel with Neptune presiding over a wedding, ca. 1560, anonymous Florentine (Italian) artist.

Gore: advocate for alternatives to fossil-fuel-based economy. Chris Hildreth

Credit: Les Todd

Reviving ruins: Technology helps students recreate ancient sites. Credit: Laura Fravel / Akara Lee.

Modern-day Thoreau: Ilgunas at center of his radical living experiment. Jon Gardiner

European domination: Finals of 2006 World Cup pitted France against Italy. Stephane Reix/For Picture/Corbis

Credit: Jeff Trull

Balancing act: Pilobolus blends elegance, wit, and athleticism. Credit: John Kane

During the daytime in the subtidal zone, when light filters through the water just below the ocean's surface, sea urchins scramble for a place to hide. They're looking for a crevice where they can lie low until evening, when predators are few and food is plenty. As it turns out, they find their hiding places without the benefit of a specialized sense organ like the eye.

Women from all walks of life: participants in effective-communication session.

Seth Gardner '89, J.D. '94, M.B.A. '94 has been appointed executive director of the new Center for Financial Excellence at the Fuqua School of Business. The courses and programs offered through the center will focus on core financial concepts and real-world applications, while incorporating critical lessons learned from the financial crisis.Kristina Johnson, U.S.

For more than two decades, Joanne Kurtzberg HS '83, the director of Duke's pediatric blood- and marrow-transplant program, has been studying stem cells in umbilical-cord blood and their possible use in treating diseases like cancer and cerebral palsy. This spring, the university received a $10.2 million gift from North Carolina's Robertson Foundation to create a permanent center devoted to turning this research into therapy.

Many elementary-school children with clinically elevated attention problems in one grade no longer demonstrate these problems the following year in their new classroom, according to a study led by Duke researchers.