With Duke Engineering students facilitating cryptocurrency transactions for class and DEMAN Live partnering with the Innovation Co-Lab to explore NFTs, it feels like blockchain is suddenly everywhere at Duke. But that wasn’t the case back when Manmit Singh ’22, now president of the Duke Blockchain Lab, was a first-year student. “I thought blockchain was some kind of video game,” Singh said wryly. While most people know of blockchain through Bitcoin and other digital currencies, it’s so much more than that. A blockchain is… read more » about These Days, Blockchain is Everywhere at Duke
DURHAM, N.C. -- Most of us remember a time when we could eat anything we wanted and not gain weight. But a new study suggests your metabolism -- the rate at which you burn calories -- actually peaks much earlier in life, and starts its inevitable decline later than you might guess. The findings were published Aug. 12 in the journal Science. “There are lots of physiological changes that come with growing up and getting older,” said study co-author Herman Pontzer, associate professor of evolutionary anthropology… read more » about Metabolism Changes With Age, Just Not When You Might Think
DURHAM, N.C. – Antibiotic resistance, which the CDC calls one of the world’s most urgent public health crises, is now being found in the guts of lemurs, our distant primate cousins. In a new study appearing Aug. 9 in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, Duke researchers have found evidence for antibiotic resistance in the microbiome of lemurs living close to humans. And the closer the contact, the more antibiotic resistance they found. The research team, graduate student Sally Bornbusch and Christine Drea,… read more » about Drug-Resistant Bacteria Found In The Guts Of Lemurs Who Live Around Humans
If you don’t think a laboratory is the ideal place to explore complex themes and methodologies like valuing care, ethnography, urbanism or games and culture, you may need to expand your definition beyond beakers and microscopes. Labs are hives of communication, cooperation and active collaboration. They are driven by a commitment to curiosity and exploration that often produces unanticipated paths and solutions. And utilizing those features for research in the humanities – a scholarly area that has traditionally focused on… read more » about Innovative, Interdisciplinary Labs Reshape Humanities Research and Teaching
Four visiting humanities scholars from historically Black colleges and universities and liberal-arts institutions arrived at Duke this August to collaborate with Duke students, faculty and staff. Their projects will cover commemoration practices, early Christian manuscripts, a 17th century Mexican philosopher and the ephemeral nature of digital projects. The fellows are part of Humanities Unbounded, an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded initiative designed to nurture collaboration and inventive expressions of the… read more » about Duke Welcomes New Cohort of Visiting Humanities Scholars from HBCUs and Liberal-Arts Schools
DURHAM, N.C. – This fall marks an uncertain moment in the pandemic, with rising COVID-19 infection rates in the United States and a shifting public health response to protect the population from the highly infectious Delta variant of the virus. At the same time, K-12 schools will soon be filled with a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated students. To help inform upcoming decisions that parents, teachers and school administrators will face, a panel of Duke university experts in pediatrics, psychiatry and neuroscience offered… read more » about Back-to-School Advice for Dealing with COVID-19, Stress and Learning Loss
The National Science Foundation has awarded two Duke faculty members $10 million to develop tools and strategies in computing education that increase the entry, retention and course or degree completion rates of high school and undergraduate students from historically underrepresented groups. Nicki Washington, professor of the practice in Computer Science, and Shaundra Daily, professor of the practice in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science, will receive funding over the next five years to create The… read more » about Duke Professors to Lead Nationwide Effort to Diversify Participation in Computing
Nicolas Altemose started doing research on the human genome during his first year at Duke. Now, the Biology major and 2011 graduate has contributed to one of the decade’s biggest advances in science and medicine: the most complete sequencing of the human genome to date. Along with a team of 99 scientists from all over the world, Altemose helped fill in many gaps in the human genome, correct past errors and find over a hundred seemingly functional new genes. His contribution focuses on centromeres, the bundle of DNA that… read more » about Duke Biology Alum Helps Unveil the Human Genome
Duke student pianist Yi Chen produced a video of himself playing two parts of a Bach Contrapunctus IX arrangement for two pianos. read more » about A Little Bach Music With Two Pianos and One Student
A student film project at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) was turned this week into a 12-minute opinion video for the New York Times. In the film, James Robinson, who graduated in 2020, shows what it feels like to live with several disabling eye conditions that have defied an array of treatments and caused him countless humiliations. Using playful graphics and enlisting his family as subjects in a series of optical tests, he invites others to view the world through… read more » about How Life Looks Through 'My Whale Eyes'