How much energy does a dolphin burn in a day?

Not only what’s the caloric cost, but can a dolphin afford to forever be dodging boats? That’s so much effort. And how many burned calories keep a mammal warm in cold seawater? How much lost biomass—that’s sea life in this context— is too much before a dolphin can’t get enough to eat?

How do you even measure that, anyway?

You go where you know there are dolphins, and you ask them nicely.

At Duke University, surfing is not a career. Period.

The first rule of magic is not to trust magicians, says Duke Sleight Club president Wesley Pritzlaff. The second is not to forget what your card is.

Among other things, February is known as a month in which we should consider matters of the heart. Which means, in a way, every month is February for Arun Sharma ’12.

New page turners on the shelves

Bravery, humility, loyalty, and service are the common threads linking the soldiers profiled in Valor: Unsung Heroes From Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front by Mark Lee Greenblatt ’95.

“I’m going home. That’s it. I don’t want to hear anything else!”

Having HIV testing close to one’s home makes in more likely that one will get tested. At the same time, HIV preferences vary greatly across individuals, according to new research conducted by Duke Global Health Institute faculty members. The findings could help inform how HIV-testing services are adapted and expanded across sub-Saharan Africa.

The old saying goes, “Yawns are contagious,” but have you considered the biology behind it? While previous studies have suggested a connection between contagious yawning and empathy, new research from the Duke Center for Human Genome Variation finds that contagious yawning may decrease with age and is not strongly related to variables like empathy, tiredness, and energy levels.

Kara Medoff Barnett ’00 began taking ballet classes at the age of three and entertained the idea of becoming a professional dancer before she was sidelined with an injury in high school. By the time she arrived at Duke, she had switched her sights from arts to medicine, taking pre-med courses and volunteering with the student-run Emergency Medical Services group.

Jeffrey Swanson, a professor in the Duke School of Medicine’s department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, offers an analogy for perceptions of mental health. “There’s this continuum between night and day, and there’s this moment, dusk, where you can’t really tell the difference between night and day.” Dusk suggests that there is no absolute of either; that it’s a question of degree.

Athletes who suffer from torn-cartilage injuries may soon be in luck. Mimicking the strength and suppleness of natural cartilage is tricky, but Duke researchers have developed a synthetic version that comes pretty close to the real thing.

Articular cartilage, the tissue between bones and joints, enables us to bend body parts like elbows, hips, and knees. But overuse or injury can lead to wear-and-tear on cartilage, making movement painful and difficult.

Less than two-thirds of doctors and teenage patients talk about sex, sexuality, or dating during yearly checkups, according to a Duke Medicine study published in JAMA Pediatrics last December. The conversations that do occur usually last just over thirty seconds, on average.

As a high-school athlete, Parker Poliakoff ’14 played football, lacrosse, and golf, rowed crew, and was a nationally ranked wrestler who hoped for a walk-on position with the Blue Devils. But when back and knee injuries put a damper on his varsity aspirations, Poliakoff was forced to regroup.

On a sun-drenched Sunday afternoon in late September, the Duke women's varsity soccer team trails Virginia Tech 0-1. Seven minutes into the second half, forward Kelly Cobb '15 falls to the field clutching her right leg. Cobb is considered one of the best goal-scorers in the country; she played on the 2012 U.S. World Cup team that won the gold in Japan. But she’s also been plagued by injuries that have warranted surgery, physical therapy, and rehab.

Your aching back might get some relief if a new biomaterial from Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering succeeds in its intention. In a study, graduate student Aubrey Francisco and biomedical engineering professor Lori Setton describe a material designed to deliver a booster shot of reparative cells to the nucleus pulposus (NP), the jelly-like cushion found between spinal discs.

Sports medicine at Duke—a division of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery—will get a boost through a $20 million gift from Steven and Rebecca Jensen Scott. The gift will expand clinical and research program development, faculty recruitment and retention, and support for sports-medicine training, as well as providing support from the medical school. This is among several significant gifts for Duke Forward, the $3.25 billion fundraising campaign launched last September.