Nov - Dec 2005 Issue

 After many short-term jobs since graduation, I've finally figured out what I really want to do: arts administration. Trouble is, my only relevant experience is from college. How do I get my foot in the door?

 

  Les Todd.  

 A three-day environmental summit in September marked the launch of Duke's new Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, dedicated to forecasting important environmental problems and recommending effective policy based on unbiased data and careful analysis of the issues.

Entrance exam:

  Your mother was always trying to convince you that what tasted worst was actually best for you. According to new research from scientists at Duke Medical Center, University College London, and the German Institute of Human Nutrition, she was only half wrong.

 

 

  

 

Thanks for the MemoriesJust this afternoon, I found time to begin reading the September-October issue of Duke Magazine. On page 25, my heart stopped, for there in Campus Observer, with the article "Make Me a Match," was a picture of part of my family. I couldn't believe it!

 

 

  

 Obese people are less likely to receive preventive services such as mammograms, Pap smears, and flu shots from health-care providers, according to an analysis of health-care data by Duke Medical Center researchers.

 During the summer of 1923, Duke President William Preston Few interviewed Alice M. Baldwin for the position of dean of women. In her memoir, Baldwin recalls one notable question during their conversation: "He asked me if I could take criticism and disappointment without weeping!"

Yektan Turkyilmaz was reveling in scholarly satisfaction.Having spent two months poring over archival collections--an interlude critical to wrapping up his dissertation work--he was sitting in an airport lounge, finishing off a cigarette and talking with three friends who had come to see him off.

Floating in the warm depths of the Gulf of Mexico, Sönke Johnsen is surrounded by "ghosts," swirls of ethereal entities whose glimmerings tell him he is not alone in the see-forever cerulean waters. He is enveloped in a clear-as-glass menagerie of creatures that make the open ocean their home. They survive because they have evolved to be nearly invisible.

Jima, Ethiopia: Sister Tsigue Petros pulled the jeep to a stop behind Maryam Church at the entry to the cemetery, referred to derisively by the locals of this coffee-growing outpost as "Maryam Village." No gate adorned the graveyard's entrance; no sign marked the way. Only a well-trodden path offered evidence of the living on this sacred land otherwise reserved for the dead.

While heart patients have long appreciated the pain relief brought by nitroglycerin tablets, researchers have just as long puzzled over how the drug works. Now professor of medicine Jonathan Stamler and his colleagues have pinpointed the active mechanism of nitroglycerin.

  

Mask, 1997, by Ron Mueckpolyester resin and mixed media

  A new student plaza and an organ for the Divinity School are among university priorities that will benefit from a recent $6-million gift from Aubrey McClendon '81 and Katie Byrns McClendon '80, of Oklahoma City.

  

Les Todd

    Lawrence: Muslims not monolithic, Photo: Les Todd.  

  

Duke honored outstanding students, faculty members, employees, and alumni at its annual Founders' Day Convocation in Duke Chapel. Honorees included physician and human-rights activist Paul E. Farmer '82, former university archivist William E. King '61, A.M. '63, Ph.D. '70, and Ambassador Robin Chandler Duke.

Tyler Brown, a Duke engineering student, was killed in San Francisco October 9 when the taxicab in which he was riding was hit by a pickup truck.

 Rebecca Lee Porter and Laura Hewitt Tuson are the new Alumni Endowed Undergraduate Scholars for the Class of 2009. The scholarship program was established by the Duke Alumni Association in 1979 to recognize the academic, extracurricular, and personal achievements of children, grandchildren, or relatives of Duke alumni.

  The Duke Endowment of Charlotte is giving $75 million to the university for student financial aid--the largest single gift made by the Endowment in its eighty-one-year history, and the largest single gift ever received by Duke.Richard H. Brodhead, who assumed Duke's presidency in July 2004, has identified strengthening the university's financial-aid endowment as one of his highest priorities.

 

Chandra Y. Guinn has been named director of the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture. A Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Guinn taught previously in Duke's African and African American studies program.Duke biochemist Chris Raetz is a member of a multi-university research team that is receiving a $14.8-million grant to collaborate on the creation of an improved anti-pneumonia vaccine for newborns.

Everybody talks about the weather, and now, maybe, something can be done about it. Duke has been chosen to administer a new U.S. Department of Energy program that will distribute approximately $10 million to universities and other institutions in the Southeast for climate- change research during the next five years.

  The War Complex: World War II in Our Time By Marianna Torgovnick. The University of Chicago Press, 2005. 209 pages. $25.

  The Good Priest's Son By Reynolds Price '59. Scribner, 2005. 278 pages. $26.

Stuffing the truck: students gather supplies for hurricane evac

Six alumni and two Duke parents were named recipients of Charles A. Dukes Awards for outstanding volunteer service to Duke. The awards, sponsored by the Duke Alumni Association, are named for the late Dukes '29, director of alumni affairs from 1944 to 1963. The citations honor individuals who reflect his dedication to the university. Award winners are selected by the DAA board of directors and the executive committee of the Annual Fund.

Lost in Translation, the late William Vaughan '30, the ph