Sep - Oct 2004 Issue

 Aramaic, an ancient language thrust into the public ear this year by Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ, was what one scholar calls "the English of the ancient world." But researchers now worry that aspects of Judaism and Christianity are being overlooked by academics proficient only in other ancient languages.

 Questions and AnswersCareer CornerI just graduated from Duke and I don't have a job. Help!

 Reading ListWe asked members of the English department:Name your favorite collections of poems by a contemporary and a classic poet:

 

 

 In the coming year, Duke's medical school will institute significant curriculum changes to better prepare its graduates to cope with the rapid advances in medical science and to address such major issues as emerging diseases, the obesity epidemic, and economic pressures in health care.

 

 

 World War II has been exhaustively studied, but Duke professor Clare Tufts is investigating one aspect of the war that has received little attention: the French comics front.

 Fluid dynamics:bump-ridged flippers produce more lift

 

 Shortly before writing this, I was in a staring contest with a roll. It was at the end of a salad bar, imploring me, at least implicitly, to initiate the act of consumption. I wrestled with that roll, or at least with the thought of that roll, and in the end saw to it that the roll had no role in my lunch fare.

 

 Redan, September 8, 1855 By Sir Henry Charles Eden Malet Watercolor from the Malet Family Papers.

 

 If the emotional memory of a traumatic car accident or the thrill of first love are remembered with a special resonance, it is because they engage different brain structures than do normal memories, say Duke researchers reporting in a June issue of the journal Neuron.

 

Edward A. Kramer came face to face with the monster, and experienced not fear, but clarity.The year was 1999. The monster was a mummy with 300-year-old flesh hanging off its bones.

At six foot three, Philip Benfey towers incongruously over the bedraggled-looking collection of shriveled plants that he displays with considerable pride. The plants languish in plastic pots on a shelf in his laboratory's closet-like plant-growth room. They remain stubbornly, even ungratefully stunted, although they bask in brilliant artificial sunlight, ensconce their roots in the best soil, and imbibe the scientifically determined optimal measure of water and fertilizer.

Will Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur know your dirty little secret: You know that you don't know as much as you think other people think you should know.Don't worry; they're not going to expose your intellectual shortcomings to public ridicule. To the contrary, these 2001 Duke graduates and co-founders of mental_floss magazine want to help.First, a few cerebral calisthenics:

The bagel section at Elisabetta Politi's neighborhood supermarket says it all. Six months ago, shelf space devoted to the onetime low-fat staple of health fanatics took up three long yards. Today, it's less than half that."People are not buying rice, bread, pasta, and bagels as much as before," observes Politi, the nutrition manager of the Duke Diet & Fitness Center. "And for the first time, they're eating more eggs. This low-carb trend has touched everybody.

 

 

 

 

 A new Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research, an expansion and consolidation of the Duke Nicotine Research Program, will seek to develop, evaluate, and disseminate improved methods for quitting smoking. The center is being established with $15 million from Philip Morris USA. The funds will be distributed annually in $5-million increments over the next three years.

 Photo:Duke University Medical Center

  

    Locke: saying yes to the worthy projects.

 Richard H. Brodhead will officially become Duke's ninth president on Saturday, September 18. The inauguration will be the culmination of a weeklong celebration, with activities ranging from cultural and community events to discussions of global issues.

 Nearly a year and a half after seventeen-year-old Jésica Santillán died from a botched heart-lung transplant at Duke Hospital, the result of mismatched blood types, Duke University Health System (DUHS) has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum of money to her family. The terms of the settlement are to be kept confidential under court order.

 

 The Southeastern Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church elected Duke's William H. Willimon as a new bishop during the group's annual conference. Willimon, who joined the faculty of the Duke Divinity School in 1976, was named minister to the university in 1984 and dean of Duke Chapel and professor of Christian ministry five years later.

 Despite controversy surrounding the plans, Duke has agreed to host the fourth National Student Conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) on October 15-17, citing principles of free speech and a commitment to providing an environment for the safe and open airing of controversial ideas.

 Football Player Killed

 There's a "master switch" that cancer cells use to dispatch protective messages to nearby blood vessels, fortifying the vessels against deadly onslaughts of radiation. The messages enable blood vessels to survive and ultimately nourish any remaining cancer cells that escape toxic radiation therapy. These findings by researchers at Duke were published in the May 2004 issue of Cancer Cell.

 Seductress: Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love By Betsy Prioleau Ph.D.'80. Viking Press, 2003. 384 pages. $24.95.

 

 Duke's three newest trustees are David Gergen Hon. '01 of Cambridge, Massachusetts; Kathryn A. Laidlaw '04 of Katy, Texas; and William P. Miller '77 of Greensboro, North Carolina. They began their terms on the thirty-seven-member governing body July 1.

 

 When Michele Miller Sales '78, J.D. '81 stepped down as president of the Duke Alumni Association at the board's May meeting, she left her successor, William P. Miller '77, not only the gavel of office, but also an entirely new set of university leaders: directors of both alumni affairs and university development, a vice president for alumni affairs and development, a medical-center chancellor, and a president.