Nov - Dec 2010 Issue

Rice is the world’s most popular source of food, but rising temperatures associated with global climate change may diminish the amount of rice available for harvest. An international team that included Duke researcher Jeffrey R.

Waste not: Experimental project will transform hog

Growing numbers of critically ill patients spend prolonged periods of time on ventilators, but little is known about what happens to them after they leave the intensive-care unit. A new study by Duke researchers provides some insight, pointing to the need for changes in the way that doctors and patients’ families approach certain cases of end-of-life care.

Recent years have seen a proliferation in smartphones, Internet-enabled devices that operate as hybrids of cell phones and computers. Users customize their phones with apps, software programs intended to help accomplish various tasks.

From one to two: late stage of HeLa human cell division. Credit: Dr.

Rising obesity rates have precipitated a public-health crisis in recent years, and many researchers have studied how much the epidemic costs workers and businesses. For the most part, the researchers have looked at the extent to which health conditions caused or worsened by obesity have hurt employers, either by increases in medical expenditures or in time absent from work.

It's been a whirlwind year for Delta Rae, the four-piece band fronted by brothers Eric and Ian Hölljes. Since its debut at Duke in October 2009, the band has attracted a multigenerational following, released a self-titled EP that has sold more than 2,000 copies, and opened for the pop-rock trio Hanson. Eric, who cowrote the hit “Cooler Than Me” with classmate Mike Posner '10, just signed a publishing deal with Warner/Chappell Music and has sung a demo for rapper 50 Cent.

Everyone loves a big dramatic story, and the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico gave the media the opportunity to tell a whopper: the fiery explosion, the ever-growing estimates of how much oil was spewing into the gulf, and BP’s repeated failed attempts to cap the well. And who could forget the images of oil-slicked pelicans or dirty brown tar balls washing up on white sandy beaches or that endless loop showing oil gushing out of the wellhead at the ocean bottom?

The Duke Alumni Association has named the winners of the Forever Duke Award, created in 2009 to recognize excellence in alumni volunteer service to the university, the alumni association, and their various constituencies.“This is our second year honoring Forever Duke award winners,” says Sterly L. Wilder ’83, associate vice president for alumni affairs. “These are extraordinary volunteers who, day in and day out, make exceptional efforts to serve Duke and the DAA.”

Credit: Kacy JohnsonDuke Magazine asked Gary Kueber, creator of Endangered Durham, to name a few of his favorite posts.

The Duke Alumni Association (DAA) and the Annual Fund have awarded Charles A. Dukes Awards to six alumni 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. Winners are selected by the DAA board of directors and the executive committee of the Annual Fund.

If a brain tumor leads a father to molest his stepdaughter (an actual case), can he be held morally or legally responsible for his actions?

The Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy (IGSP) was founded in 2003 as a response to, in the words of its director, Huntington Willard, “the dizzying array of developments that have emerged in the genome sciences.” Willard says genomic understanding “represents a tremendous opportunity to improve the lot of humanity, especially by using genomic information to individualize health care.” Along with the opportunity come challenges in the social, legal, policy, and ethical arenas.

Credit: Jared Lazarus

On November 9, 1910, William Preston Few accepted the presidency of Trinity College, vowing “to keep the future worthy of the past.” This turned out to be no hollow promise: Few deserves much of the credit for Trinity’s transformation into Duke University.

An improvisational theater performance is like a job interview.

Surprise in the skies: Plesser directs viewers to celestial wonders. Credit: Chris Hildreth

Earle an Exemplar

  Davindra Lokhande

When we adopted Scooter in 2008, my partner and I were curious about the ancestry of our sleek five-month-old puppy. Clearly she was a Labrador retriever mix, as the Durham County animal shelter had labeled her. She possessed the classic Lab muzzle, along with a dense black coat and an eagerness to please. But what else was she? With that broad forehead and the mouthy way she wrestled at the dog park, might there be some pit bull in Scooter’s background (not that we would mind)?

Today’s college students have no interest in dating, seek physical intimacy through random sexual encounters, and consider drunken promiscuity the social norm on campus. That’s been the dominant narrative reported by the mainstream media, by college task forces on student life, and, in many cases, by students themselves.

Even in the Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr era, most people don’t put highly personal details like this—especially biological ones, such as medical records and genetic data—out for the world to see. But for Church, the personal is professional. All this openness is part of an experiment he’s running called the Personal Genome Project (PGP), in which volunteers are having their DNA sequenced and making the resulting genotypes, along with relevant details about their lifestyles and medical histories (a.k.a., phenotypes), known to anyone who’s curious.

Commanding presence: Gates addresses ROTC students from Duke and other universities during campus visit. Les Todd

In Morocco, a majority Islamic nation, premarital virginity is considered sacred. Writer Sarah Dohrmann spent fifteen months there beginning in 2007, conducting interviews with female prostitutes and, in 2008, was joined by photographer Tiana Markova-Gold.

On the move: theater studies production of Pericles. Credit: Les Todd.

For the average moviegoer, the annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival will continue to be a four-day event where some of the latest and best nonfiction cinema from around the world will be shown each spring. But behind the scenes, the organization’s structure has shifted: The Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke is once again the institutional home for the festival.

Jazz combo: Fight the Big Bull.

The papers of poet and fiction writer Dorothy Allison have joined those of such celebrated Southern writers as William Styron ’47, Hon. ’68; Anne Tyler ’61; and Richard Bausch in the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, part of the university’s Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library.

Credit: Megan Morr.

While the recession has been declared officially over, and financial markets have picked up in recent months, the university is still working to cut $40 million from its budget.Administrators say that the process they began in 2008 will be completed on schedule and that they do not plan any involuntary layoffs, cutbacks in employee benefits, or alterations to the need-blind financial-aid program.

Since opening in January, the renovated East Campus steam plant has been making a name for itself as one of the most innovative buildings in the state.

When we meet Vanessa Woods, she is a naïve, love-struck twenty-something preparing to follow her fiancé, Brian Hare (now her husband and an assistant professor of anthropology at Duke), to Africa, where they will research primate behavior. Caught up in the romance of a budding relationship, she writes: “I pictured us in matching safari outfits, striding through the Ngamba forest, baby chimpanzees dangling from our arms. I would make insightful and intelligent comments that would revolutionize his research.

• Richard Dawkins, Charles Simonyi Professor Emeritus of the public understanding of science at the University of Oxford and a noted atheist, at Page Auditorium. He summarized and read from his recent book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.

Enduring tradition: Steel delivers keynote in ceremony honoring Duke legacy. Credit: Leslie Todd

It used to be that when senior Drolma Gadou wanted to return to her hometown of Choni in Tibet, it took her two days. By horse cart. These days, she says, it takes her two hours by rental car over newly paved roads.Gadou, who is majoring in international comparative studies, is all too aware that her country is changing rapidly. Unfortunately, she says, many of her people are being left behind.

It’s been twenty-five years since medical researchers came to an agreement about what Alzheimer’s disease looked like, leading to a major effort to try to understand its causes and, ultimately, to find a cure. Those with family members affected by the disease have seen good news and bad news this year: Promising research points to the possibility of earlier diagnosis, but a major late-stage drug trial was shut down because the therapy was found to be ineffective.

Back in the day, football used to be the main focus of Homecoming celebrations on college campuses. But thanks to ambitious programming by the Duke Alumni Association, a gridiron showdown was only one of dozens of activities that this year’s Homecoming participants could choose from.

Planet Cancer by Heidi Schultz Adams and Christopher Schultz '95. Lyons Press, 2010. 272 pages. $19.95.

In Durham, the train tracks are still there, but the station, sixty-five-foot Italianate tower and all, is gone. In its place is a multilevel parking deck. Cars go by on the four-lane section of road beside it—part of the loop built around the city’s center. Looking at the site today, it is hard to imagine that the massive structure once vibrant with passengers boarding and disembarking was ever there in the first place.