Nov - Dec 2008 Issue

Chainlink: electron micrograph of cobalt nanoparticles. G. Cheng, A.R. Hight Walker / NIST

The Duke Alumni Association and the Annual Fund will present Charles A. Dukes Awards to six alumni and friends for outstanding volunteer service to the university. The awards, named for the late Dukes '29, director of the alumni-affairs office from 1944 to 1963, honor individuals who reflect his dedication to the university. Dukes award winners are selected by the DAA board of directors and the executive committee of the Annual Fund.

Over the years, the magazine has showcased writers with impressive credentials in the profession—the profession of writing, that is. But publishing a neuroscientist-writer like John Pearson, a postdoctoral researcher, is a novelty.Pearson earned his Ph.D. in 2004 from Princeton University, where he studied string theory and quantum gravity. The next year he came to Duke to work on problems in theoretical and computational neuroscience.

When Caitlin McLaughlin signed up for Ed Tower's economics course on international trade and development this past spring, she got more than she bargained for—in the best possible sense. Thanks to a new Duke project, McLaughlin '08 ended up with an invitation for dinner—in Hanoi, Vietnam, with Myla Taylor Williams '75, Country Program Coordinator for Vietnam at the World Bank.

Among the groups profiled in the Duke Magazine survey of religious life on campus were Muslim students. Their official adviser at the time was a local imam who received only a small stipend for his service.

Trinity Park School students relax in their dorm room. Duke University Archives

Peter Haff. Credit: Les Todd

Over the summer, President Richard H. Brodhead found himself in the middle of a minor controversy when he, along with more than 100 other college and university presidents and chancellors, signed on to the Amethyst Initiative, a movement calling for fresh debate on the national minimum drinking age.

 

Megan Morr

"Christening by digital fire." That's how Elisabeth Benfey, a lecturing fellow in the theater studies department, describes her undergraduate filmmaking class. Recently, Benfey worked with writer Michael Malone, a visiting professor of the practice, on a collaborative project between fledgling filmmakers in her class and students in his course on adapting literature for the screen.

Oprah Winfrey. Kimberly White/Reuters/Corbis

Kazu NittaShow Them the Money

 

Reynolds Price.

Barkley L. Hendricks. Credit: Les Todd

"Is Duke safe?"The caller was an alumnus who graduated in the early 1980s. His oldest child and only daughter had just been accepted to Duke. He had read about the murder of a graduate student in an off-campus apartment last January, and heard anecdotes about Durham's crime rate and gang activity. And like people everywhere—but especially parents of young adults—he'd been horrified when a gunman at Virginia Tech killed thirty-two people and injured dozens of others before committing suicide.

It's class time on a characteristically hot afternoon in early September, and Craufurd Goodwin, now in his forty-sixth year on the Duke faculty, is musing about themes that, to most of his economist colleagues, would seem uncharacteristically eclectic. He tells his students that history and sociology reveal certain qualities in creative communities. A creative community needs a founding document. It needs a lightning-rod personality. And it needs to coalesce around an event that's a little rebellious, a little dangerous.

For a brief time in January of 2007, after saving a fellow passenger from an oncoming subway train, Wesley Autrey, a New York City construction worker, was a national hero. "I had to make a split decision," he told The New York Times the next day. "I just saw someone who needed help. I did what I felt was right."

Friedman: Markets must drive environmental change. Megan Morr

 

A Nice Treat by Wong Luisang, 1996. Artkey / Corbis

The Annunciation, ca. 1640, by Francisco Rizi de Guevara Spanish (1614-1685), oil on canvas. 50 1/4 inches x 56 inches.

At a September ceremony that featured Cossack dancers, Chinese acrobats, and a Beatles tribute band, leaders in the Fuqua School of Business announced plans to develop a network of five new partner campuses designed to bring business education to students and scholars worldwide.

Knowing about financial relationships between medical researchers and the companies that sponsor their studies has little effect on most patients considering enrolling in a clinical trial, according to a new study from the Duke Clinical Research Institute.

George White III '84. Credit: Jim Callaway

 Megan Morr

White: striving for "a harmonious relationship be

 Jared Lazarus

Most animals develop their vocal communication signals, whether grunts or squeals or calls, through trial and error: If it gets the message across, use it again. But some species of birds, like humans, are different. Their young learn through mimicry, that is, by imitating the sounds made by their elders.

  Susan Seubert  

Here comes the neighborhood: residents and friends of Big Funk

Courtesy of Charles Sparkman

Li-Chen Chin is the new director of Duke's International House, which helps new international students acclimate to life in the U.S. and at Duke, provides support to existing students, and promotes cross-cultural interaction on campus.

 

In early October, as world financial markets rose and fell with each new piece of news about a potential bailout bill working its way through the U.S. Congress, President Richard H. Brodhead convened a campus-wide President's Forum on Critical Issues focused on the economy.