Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
The latest twist in the extraordinary career of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian politician known simply as Lula, has seen him enter a runoff to become the country’s president once again. “The life of Lula is very much a phoenix-like situation,” said John French, a professor of history at Duke and Lula biographer who has studied him for 40 years. Professor John French Lula, who was president of Brazil from 2002-2010, led the pack in the first round of voting in Brazil’s… read more » about Duke History Professor On A 'Phoenix-Like' Political Comeback
The recent death of a young Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, while in the custody of Iranian authorities has sparked a massive wave of protests – both online and in the streets. There are echoes of the past in this new wave of protests along with a very clear demand for freedom and bodily autonomy, three Duke scholars said Thursday in a virtual media briefing. (Watch the briefing on YouTube.) Here are excerpts: ON IMPETUS FOR IRAN PROTESTS Negar Mottahedeh, Middle Eastern Studies scholar “There’s 40… read more » about Protests Grow More Frequent As Young Iranians Demand More Freedoms, Experts Say
Dr. Jonathon Yuly, a former graduate student in the Beratan Lab, has received the 2022 American Physical Society’s DBIO Dissertation Award! The award, which recognizes doctoral thesis research of outstanding quality and achievement in any area of experimental, computational, engineering, or theoretical biological physics, will be bestowed at an upcoming APS meeting. Dr. Yuly's dissertation work showed that a universal free energy landscape underpins near-reversible electron bifurcation… read more » about Former Beratan Lab Student Receives 2022 APS DBIO Dissertation Award
When he was named the inaugural Presidential Fellow, social scientist Tyson Brown wasn’t certain what it would involve or what skills he would come out of it. But very quickly he learned that this wasn’t an internship or a training ground for academic leadership, but a means by which he could have a different perspective of the university as a whole, beyond even any university networks he had developed as an interdisciplinary scholar of health and society. As he completes his work as a fellow – with engineering professor… read more » about Tyson Brown’s Year of Exploring Duke Leadership
National recognition and respect for Asian Americans is surging, and yet, racial violence against Asian Americans is rising as well. Rather than seeing these as opposing trends, it makes more sense to understand how they are connected, suggests Amherst College Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty Pawan Dhingra. “To combat anti-Asian violence, we need to get at the root of what's behind it. Celebrating Asian Americans will not adequately meet that goal,” said Dhingra, who has been appointed as the Nannerl… read more » about New Keohane Visiting Professor to Explore the Asian American Experience During Professorship at Duke and UNC
DURHAM, N.C. -- Fake it ‘til you make is true for children too, it turns out: Young girls embracing the role of a successful female scientist, like Marie Curie, persist longer at a challenging science game. A new study, appearing Sept. 28 in the journal Psychological Science, suggests that science role-playing may help tighten the gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and careers for women simply by improving their identity as scientists. Frustrated by the gender gap in STEM, in… read more » about First-Grade Girls Stick With Science After Pretending to be Marie Curie
Amy Goldberg’s passion for human evolution probably started with the genetic anthropology books her father poured over during his Ph.D. studies. “I remember very clearly sitting and looking at one of his big textbooks and sounding out the word au-stra-lo-pith-e-cus when I was maybe nine or 10 years old,” she recalled. Goldberg is an assistant professor of Evolutionary Anthropology, Mathematics and Biology, which indicates how interdisciplinary her background is. While shared appointments between Biology and Evolutionary… read more » about With Amy Goldberg, Mathematics Meets Genetics to Decode Our Evolutionary Past
In her new book, "Made-Up Asians: Yellowface During the Exclusion Era," Esther Kim Lee traces the history of yellowface from 1862 to 1940 — a time when Asians faced legal and cultural exclusion from immigration and citizenship in the United States. We sat down with the professor of Theater Studies, International Comparative Studies and History and director of the Asian American Diaspora Studies Program to talk about the book, why Hollywood producers would go to such lengths to avoid hiring East Asian actors and… read more » about Esther Kim Lee Explains How Today’s Racism Has Roots in Last Century’s Yellowface
September is National Service Dog Month, and the four new members of the 2022 Duke Puppy Kindergarten have been around the Triangle promoting the value of service dogs. The puppies are part of a National Institute of Health-funded project that tests the cognitive development of puppies from eight weeks old to 20 weeks old, during their last, rapid stage of puppy brain development. The goal of the project is to understand what experiences puppies need early in life to be successful service animals. This… read more » about Waiting to Serve: Duke Puppy Kindergarten Students Promote the Value of Service Dogs
At Duke, Lihua Mo-Hunter (B.S. Neuroscience; minor Dance and Linguistics ’23) has been laser focused on a pre-med track. This summer, Mo-Hunter worked with the Duke Global Health Institute (DGHI) Student Research Training program, traveling to Kalangala, Uganda, to study sickle cell disease and to educate the local community. She’s found that her coursework in neuroscience has provided more niche topics to study: cellular and molecular neurobiology, effects of marijuana on the brain and… read more » about Dance Provides a Humanistic Outlook for a Future Neurosurgeon
DURHAM, N.C. -- Data from the largest mental health survey of the Flint, Michigan community indicate that one in five adults, or roughly 13,600 people, were estimated to have clinical depression, and one in four, or 15,000 people, were estimated to have PTSD five years after the water crisis began. “The mental health burden of America’s largest public-works environmental disaster clearly continues for many adults in Flint,” said Aaron Reuben, a postdoctoral scholar at Duke University who led the research, which appears… read more » about High Rates of Depression and PTSD Found in Flint 5 Years After Water Crisis
