Author: Guest Post Page 3 of 10

Blue is The New Color of Sustainable Investing

On October 5, 2023

In Business/Economics, Climate/Global Change, Oceans

The green bond market’s remarkable success, currently valued at over US $500 billion[i], shows how bond finance is an effective way to raise substantial capital for climate-related investments. Following on this success, blue bonds are emerging as the newest trend in sustainability investing and they’re poised to make waves.

Introduced in 2008, green bonds commit to using the funds they raise exclusively for environmentally friendly projects, assets, or business activities[ii]. Since then, the green bond market has seen explosive growth and helped to shape investor attitudes toward sustainable investing.

The blue bond market — blue as in oceans — is where green bonds were 15 years ago[iii]. Blue bonds are a relatively new type of sustainability designed to finance the conservation and sustainable management of ocean and coastal resources[iv].

The Republic of Seychelles issued the first blue bond in 2018, with funds dedicated to expanding Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and improving fisheries governance[v]. To date, only 25 other blue bonds have been issued[vi]. Although in its infancy in comparison to green bonds, the blue bond market is poised to follow a similar trajectory as governments, companies, and investors begin to realize the importance of the blue economy and the relationship between climate change and our oceans[vii].

The Ocean’s Big Role

The ocean covers 70% of the Earth’s surface, comprises 97% of all water on earth, and contains 99% of all living space on the planet[viii]. It plays a vital role in absorbing carbon dioxide and producing the oxygen we breathe, it is a significant component of the global economy, and a key element in fighting climate change. However, governments and organizations around the world continue to abuse the ocean rather than protect it. But with over three billion people reliant on a healthy ocean for their livelihoods, and more than 350 million ocean-related jobs, continued exploitation of our oceans will have catastrophic consequences[ix].

Commitments without Capital

The past few years have seen numerous commitments to restoring and protecting the long-term health our oceans. The United Nations declared 2021-2030 as “The Ocean Decade” and the 30×30 campaign pledges to protect at least 30% of the ocean by 2030[x]. Despite these commitments, the ocean remains chronically underfunded. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 “Life Under Water” receives the least amount of long-term funding of any of the SDGs. Recent reports suggest that $175 billion per year is needed to achieve SDG 14 by 2030; and yet, between 2015 and 2019, just below USD $10 billion was invested.[xi]

Source: https://icg.citi.com/icghome/what-we-think/citigps/insights/sustainable-ocean-economy

Not only does this gap prevent any meaningful progress, the cost of inaction is devastating. Failing to invest in our oceans could result in a total bill of USD $200 billion to $1 trillion a year by 2100 in loss of land, people relocation, and coastal protection[xii]. To put it simply, we cannot afford to underinvest in our oceans.

Mobilizing Capital Through Blue Bonds

Current ocean funding comes primarily through public and philanthropic sources, which are essential, however incredibly insufficient. Enabling the increased use of private finance is critical to achieving ocean conservation goals, and the use of blue bonds can play an essential role.

Bonds are a debt instrument that facilitates an interaction between a borrower and an investor. The investor provides capital to the borrower, and the borrower is required to pay back that capital within a certain period. In the case of blue bonds, the borrower is also required to use the capital to create positive impact on the marine environment. Such an arrangement enables the borrower to access significant amounts of capital upfront and provides the investor with a predictable income stream. This relationship is of particular use within the climate landscape. Green and blue bonds effectively unlock additional sources of capital for climate-related investments and enable private investors to participate in markets that would otherwise be considered too risky.

Source: https://enviroaccounting.com/green-bonds-and-pay-for-performance/

Successful Green Bonds as a Blueprint

To enable the rapid and responsible scaling of the blue bond market, we can leverage existing frameworks from green bonds as models. The green bond market has seen numerous innovative bond structures that support investment in traditionally underserved markets and align financial incentives with sustainability-focused outcomes. Three of these innovative bond issuances are outlined below and offer unique opportunities to apply similar structures to the blue bond market.

Blue is the New Green: A deep dive into three green bond structures and how they can turn blue

The Wildlife Conservation Bond

In 2022, The World Bank and Global Environment Facility issued a first-of-its-kind Wildlife Conservation Bond (WCB) which channels investment into conservation outcomes. This five-year $150 million bond contributes to protecting and increasing black rhino populations in two protected areas in South Africa[xiii]. The WCB is a great example of an innovative green bond that unlocked new financing streams for biodiversity protection and conservation initiatives.

Using the Wildlife Conservation Bond as a model, we can replicate this template across new geographies and species and transform how conservation is funded. Investors in the WCB do not receive coupon payments. Instead, the issuer makes conservation investment payments to help fund rhino conservation initiatives. In a similar manner, blue bonds can be created that enable coupon payments to be channeled to protect critical marine species.

Uruguay’s Sustainability-Linked Bond

In 2022, Uruguay issued a USD $1.5 billion sustainability-linked bond which includes a pricing feature designed to reward progress made on emissions-reduction targets. Coupon payments received by investors would decrease if the Uruguay government met pre-determined emissions targets, but if targets were missed there was a required increase in payment[xiv]. This arrangement aligned financial and environmental incentives and offered a signal to borrowers that more affordable finance is available in return for performing – or exceeding – sustainability strategies[xv].

Similar financing structures could be applied across a range of sustainability goals within the ocean landscape. Rather than reward progress on emissions reductions, blue bonds could be structured to offer favorable financing for biodiversity, establishing marine protected areas (MPA ) reducing plastic pollution, or fisheries management.

The Forests Bond

The Forests Bond was issued by the International Finance Corporation in 2016 to help unlock private finance for reducing deforestation. Investors in the USD $152 million Forests Bond could choose to receive coupons in the form of verified carbon credits, rather than cash payments[xvi]. This arrangement helped to boost demand for carbon credits and demonstrated investor interest in sustainability-focused investments.

The Forests Bond model can be repeated to support conservation of blue carbon ecosystems such as mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrasses. Blue carbon ecosystems sequester two to four times the amount of carbon of terrestrial forests, however, it is estimated that these ecosystems are being destroyed at four times the rate of tropical forests[xvii]. Designing a bond to act as a catalyst for the blue carbon market could offer the critical incentives needed to protect these essential environments.

Building the Blue Bond Wave

In all three of the above cases, investor demand for the green bond far exceeded initial expectations or the planned bond offering. This indicates that there is high investor interest for innovative bond models that provide both positive financial and climate returns. The main challenge is then providing investors with enough attractive opportunities to participate. With just 25 blue bonds issued to date, the blue bond market is nascent. Establishing a robust blue bond market requires transparency, standardization, and accountability. Clear Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) must be developed to demonstrate the tangible benefits of blue bond investments in terms of ocean conservation and sustainable resource management. Additionally, collaboration between governments, financial institutions, and environmental organizations is essential to create a supportive ecosystem that encourages blue bond issuance. Ultimately, the future of the blue bond market hinges on aligning financial incentives with environmental objectives, fostering innovation, and building a robust infrastructure that inspires trust and commitment from a diverse set of stakeholders[xviii].

Guest Post by Mackenzie Audino, 2024 Masters candidate in business administration and environmental management. This project was completed as part of the ClimateCap Fellowship, a program of the ClimateCap Initiative led by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and supported by the Hearst Foundations.

[i] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X22002664#bib26

[ii] https://www.oecd.org/environment/cc/Green%20bonds%20PP%20%5Bf3%5D%20%5Blr%5D.pdf

[iii] https://unglobalcompact.org/take-action/ocean/communication/blue-bonds-accelerating-sustainable-ocean-business

[iv] https://www.undp.org/indonesia/blog/indonesia-launches-worlds-first-publicly-offered-sovereign-blue-bond-undps-support

[v] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/10/29/seychelles-launches-worlds-first-sovereign-blue-bond

[vi] https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/16/3/184

[vii] https://www.wellington.com/en-gb/intermediary/insights/blue-bonds-marine-ecosystem

[viii] https://oceanliteracy.unesco.org/our-blue-planet/

[ix] https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/uk/Documents/risk/ocean-financing.pdf

[x] https://marine-conservation.org/30×30/

[xi] https://www.weforum.org/whitepapers/sdg14-financing-landscape-scan-tracking-funds-to-realize-sustainable-outcomes-for-the-ocean/

[xii] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23168-y

[xiii] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/03/23/wildlife-conservation-bond-boosts-south-africa-s-efforts-to-protect-black-rhinos-and-support-local-communities

[xiv] https://www.reuters.com/markets/rates-bonds/bank-floats-10-bln-brazilian-bond-plan-halt-amazon-deforestation-2022-12-19/

[xv] https://www.ifre.com/story/3661444/latin-america-bond-uruguays-us15bn-sustainability-linked-bond-wh65f7xrlp

[xvi] https://www.conservation.org/docs/default-source/peru/forests-bond_factsheet.pdf?Status=Master&sfvrsn=867eadb8_3

[xvii] https://siwi.org/latest/what-are-we-getting-wrong-about-blue-carbon/

[xviii] OpenAI. “The future of the blue bond market and what needs to happen to increase the amount of capital that is invested.” ChatGPT, 2023, [https://chat.openai.com/c/ba58a2d7-1129-465c-9fa5-f4815f08aa91]. Accessed [September 27, 2023]

Shifting from Social Comparison to “Social Savoring” Seems to Help

By Guest Post

On June 14, 2023

In Behavior/Psychology, Computers/Technology, Guest Post, Neuroscience, Students

The face of a brown-eyed girl with freckles, bangs and new adult teeth fills most of the frame. Superimposed to the right are the icons of multiple real and imagined social media apps in a semicircular arrangement. Image by geralt, via Pixabay. — Image by geralt, via pixabay.

The literature is clear: there is a dark side to engaging with social media, with linkages to depressive symptoms, a sense of social isolation, and dampened self-esteem recently revealed in the global discourse as alarming potential harms.

Underlying the pitfalls of social media usage is social comparison—the process of evaluating oneself relative to another person—to the extent that those who engage in more social comparison are at a significantly higher risk of negative health outcomes linked to their social media consumption.

Today, 72 percent of Americans use some type of social media, with most engaging daily with at least one platform.(1) Particularly for adolescents and young adults, interactions on social media are an integral part of building and maintaining social networks.(2-5) While the potential risks to psychosocial well-being posed by chronic engagement with these platforms have increasingly come to light within the past several years, mitigating these adverse downstream effects poses a novel and ongoing challenge to researchers and healthcare professionals alike.

The intervention aimed to supplant college students’ habitual social comparison … with social savoring: experiencing joyful emotions about someone else’s experiences.

A team of researchers led by Nancy Zucker, PhD, professor in Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and director of graduate studies in psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, recently investigated this issue and found promising results for a brief online intervention targeted at altering young adults’ manner of engagement with social media. The intervention aimed to supplant college students’ habitual social comparison when active on social media with social savoring: experiencing joyful emotions about someone else’s experiences.

A cartoon depicts a small man in a ball cap standing on a table with a smartphone nearby. A larger person on the right with a cat-like nose regards him with tears in her eyes. — Image from Andrade et al

Zucker’s team followed a final cohort of 55 college students (78 percent female, 42 percent White, with an average age of 19.29) over a two-week period, first taking baseline measures of their mental well-being, connectedness, and social media usage before the students returned to daily social media usage. On day 8, a randomized group of students received the experimental intervention: an instructional video on the skill of social savoring. These students were then told to implement this new skill when active on social media throughout days 8 to 14, before being evaluated with the rest of the cohort at the two-week mark.

For those taught how and why to socially savor their daily social media intake, shifting focus from social comparison to social savoring measurably increased their performance self-esteem—their positive evaluation—as compared with the control group, who received no instructional video. Consciously practicing social savoring even seemed to enable students to toggle their self-esteem levels up or down: those in the intervention group reported significantly higher levels of self-esteem on days during which they engaged in more social savoring.

Encouragingly, the students who received the educational intervention on social media engagement also opted to practice more social savoring over time, suggesting they found this mode of digesting their daily social media feeds to be enduringly preferable to that of social comparison. The team’s initial findings suggest a promising future for targeted educational interventions as an effective way to improve facets of young adults’ mental health without changing the quantity or quality of their media consumption.

Of course, the radical alternative—forgoing social media platforms altogether in the name of improved well-being—looms in the distance as an appealing yet often unrealistic option for many; therefore, thoughtfully designed, evidence-based interventions such as this research team’s program seem to offer a more realistic path forward.

Read the full journal article.

References

Auxier B, Anderson M. Social media use in 2021: A majority of Americans say they use YouTube and Facebook, while use of Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok is especially common among adults under 30. 2021.
2. McKenna KYA, Green AS, Gleason MEJ. Relationship formation on the Internet: What’s the big attraction? J Soc Issues. 2002;58(1):9-31.
3.Blais JJ, Craig WM, Pepler D, Connolly J. Adolescents online: The importance of Internet activity choices to salient relationships. J Youth Adolesc. 2008;37(5):522-536.
4. Valkenburg PM, Peter J. Preadolescents’ and adolescents’ online communication and their closeness to friends. Dev Psychol. 2007;43(2):267-277.
5. Michikyan M, Subrahmanyam K. Social networking sites: Implications for youth. In: Encyclopedia of Cyber Behavior, Vols. I – III. Information Science Reference/IGI Global; 2012:132-147.

Guest Post by Eleanor Robb, Class of 2023

Duke Civil Engineers Make Triumphant Return To Carolinas Symposium

By Guest Post

On April 19, 2023

In Engineering, Guest Post, Mathematics, Science Communication & Education, Students

After a three-year hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Duke’s student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) returned to the Carolinas in-person gathering. And they were in it to win it, taking home awards in four out of the five events in which they competed.

Duke sent seven Duke undergraduates to the symposium, which was hosted by The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina: Leo Lee, Harrison Kendall, Arthur Tsang, Hana Thibault, Anya Dias-Hawkins, Sarah Bailey and Grace Lee.

When not going for gold, the students also attended business meetings and professional workshops related to the civil engineering profession.

Seven students holding awards stand before the gateway of The Citidel in South Carolina at dusk. — (Left to right) Leo Lee, Harrison Kendall, Arthur Tsang, Hana Thibault, Anya Dias-Hawkins, Sarah Bailey, Grace Lee at The Citadel after the Symposium awards banquet.

Duke ASCE students also enjoyed networking with peers for the first time in years, meeting chapter members from other schools such as North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, North Carolina State University, The Citadel, Horry Georgetown Technical College, and Clemson University.

Sarah Bailey, Harrison Kendall, Anya Dias-Hawkins, and Hana Thibault before competing in the Quiz Bowl competition.

But when the lights came up, the gloves came off, and Duke’s students faced off against their peers in five competitions. Sophomore Anya Dias-Hawkins and junior Sarah Bailey earned third place for their efforts in the Geotechnical competition, where students were tasked with a real-life geotechnical design problem.

Juniors Grace Lee and Leo Lee along with senior Arthur Tsang won first place for their design in the Lightest Bridge competition, where popsicle bridges had to withstand a weight of 200 lbs.

Sophomores Anya Dias-Hawkins, Harrison Kendall and Hana Thibault also took home first place honors in the Freshmore competition, where students were tasked with designing an imaginary city. Lastly, Harrison Kendall won an individual award for his paper and presentation in the Daniel W. Mead Paper competition.

Arthur Tsang, Leo Lee, and Grace Lee standing on their winning Lightest Bridge design.

Duke ASCE is extremely excited to continue their efforts at the Carolinas symposium next year and hopes to send many more competitors. The group plans to compete in larger competitions such as Concrete Canoe next year at UNC Charlotte. With enough preparation, the students hope to advance to the national conference in 2024.

If you are interested in getting involved with Duke ASCE and/or competing in next year’s symposium, please email co-Presidents Sarah Bailey and Harrison Kendall at sarah.a.bailey@duke.edu or harrison.kendall@duke.edu.

Post by Harrison Kendall, civil engineering class of ‘25

Meet New Blogger Kyla: Humans Grow up. Ideas Do, Too.

By Guest Post

On September 22, 2022

In Engineering, Environment/Sustainability, Science Communication & Education, Students

If you asked my eight-year-old self what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer would have been, resoundingly, “an inventor!” It was around this time that I also decided, with surprising assuredness for a shy second grader, that I would one day build a saltwater-powered car.

I must have heard the idea somewhere, although to this day I don’t quite recall where. Perhaps it was a story on the radio. NPR was a constant background noise in the basement where I spent countless hours playing and tinkering alongside my father in his hobby shop. Or maybe it was buried somewhere in a book or science magazine. They were often stacked in neat piles, filling bookcases in many corners of our house. It also could have floated across the dinner table in conversations between my parents and older siblings. Everyday talk of high school biology and current events seemed light years out of the grasp of my eight-year-old brain.

Regardless of where it came from, the idea stuck. Before I knew what it meant to conduct research or study engineering, I found myself charmed by novel ideas and drawn to the possibility of discovery. For some reason, this “car that runs on salt water” took shelter in my mind and secured itself as the perfect idea: an ingenious invention that was good for the planet. At the time, of course, I never thought about how this whimsical, far-fetched idea was fundamentally tied to my core interests and values. Now, however, as a 21-year-old senior studying mechanical engineering, passionate about renewable energy technology and protecting the planet, it all makes perfect sense.

My interest in engineering is, at its core, a love for creativity, combined with a desire to solve problems. A fondness for physics certainly helps too, but that came much later. As a child, the desire to practice creativity manifested primarily as a love for art. Some of my earliest childhood memories are toiling away at my little table in the corner of the living room, carefully sorting the crayons in my tin Crayola box. Today, I practice creativity in my critical thinking, brainstorming, and implementation of the iterative design process.

At an elementary school science fair, I presented my model V8 engine and explained how it worked. I was drawn to many different interests before I settled on engineering, but it’s clear that the passion was always there.

The other facet that drew me towards engineering, the desire to solve problems, evolved from an early love for nature and a passion for environmentalism. I remember seeing my grandparents’ devastated home in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, and the noticeable decline in pollinators to my mother’s garden. In high school, when I heard the term “environmental engineering,” it was the first time I realized such a field existed. I immediately felt the various pieces of my interests and values click together. There are many ways to be creative and to solve problems, but for me, the combination led down a path towards pursuing engineering.

An entry from my second-grade journal, declaring my dearly held beliefs. In many ways, nothing has changed (including my ability to spell).

Despite the way I’ve laid it out, this is not to say there was a linear path between latching onto an eccentric notion as an eight-year-old, and deciding to pursue my current career as a soon-to-be graduate. Looking back now, I can see the symbolism in this cornerstone of an idea. With hindsight, I recognize why it appealed to different facets of my just-blossoming identity, and the ways in which I returned to it over the next several years. However, this is what is bound to happen when you expose yourself to as many new ideas as possible: one (at least) will catch your attention. The point is not to latch onto the first idea you stumble upon and pursue it relentlessly. The point is to keep an open mind to all ideas – and pay careful attention to the ones that light up inside your brain. The ones that stick in the back of your mind, and continuously pop up at unsuspecting times.

One of my favorite serendipitous moments in life is when, soon after learning something new, that newfound idea pops up somewhere else. It’s like receiving an unexpected gift in the form of previously inaccessible appreciation. Imagine turning over a stone and happening to uncover an insect that you just spent all night studying. It feels purely by chance, but it’s not quite.

The more you expose yourself to new ideas, the more they will appear. You never know when a story you stumble across by accident will move you to action, or lead to something bigger. A magazine I stumbled across by chance led to a research topic of an entire semester. A book I read in high school came up in an interview I had last week. An idea I heard at eight years old about an eco-friendly car perhaps started a life-long captivation with science that led me to become an engineer. Our life is made up of decisions that are based on millions of data points, determined by our history, background, and the types of ideas we surround ourselves with daily.

As a blogger for the Duke Research Blog, my goal is to make it easier for more people to have more exposure to more ideas. Each new idea has the potential to build bridges, whether expanding to new fields, or building upon an existing network of knowledge. Expanding our realm of understanding allows for challenging perspectives and broadening understandings. These are not ideas for the sake of ideas, but for the larger goal of enabling meaningful connections with others.

When more people have access to more ideas, everyone benefits. However, there’s no denying that much of the research going on at Duke is very high-level, usually going unread by much of the student body. Other fascinating content goes unnoticed simply due to the busy lives of Duke students, and the sheer volume of exciting events. (If only we could all be multiple places at once.) My goal is to take ideas – whether overly intimidating or underappreciated—and present them in a way that is more accessible for anyone who is interested.

When I first heard of the idea of salt-water running cars, the idea was just that: an idea. The frenzy began in 2007 when John Kanzius, an American engineer, accidentally discovered how to “burn” salt water while attempting to research a cure for cancer. Today, the QUANT e-Sport Limousine is an all-electric sports car concept that uses an electrolyte flow cell, powered by salt water. It actually works, and was authorized for on-road testing in Germany a few years ago soon after its debut. It is many years from authorization, and it will likely be an even longer time before it is a viable option from an economic standpoint, but the progress is apparent.

Fifteen years since my infatuation with this idea, I can’t help but feel slightly emotionally connected to it. Humans grow up. Ideas do, too. I did not invent the first car that runs on salt water, but I am eternally grateful for every new idea that fuels my curiosity, shapes my values, and expands my current perspectives.

Post by Kyla Hunter, Class of 2023

Meet New Blogger Addie: A Recovering Advice Columnist

By Guest Post

On September 21, 2022

In Mathematics, Policy, Science Communication & Education, Students

“My name is Meg Stalter I’m 5’7 I’m living in LA and a fun fact about me is something bad happened to my cousin.”

As made evident by her Twitter profile, my favorite comedian, Megan (“Meg”) Stalter, knows how to make an introduction. Stalter is best known (as far as I know) for her role in the HBO comedy “Hacks,” in which she plays Kayla (whoever that is).

I do not have a Twitter account and I have never seen the show. While we are talking about me, I will explain that I do not really watch TV, with the one exception of West Wing.

Since we are still talking about me, you should know that I fibbed. There are two exceptions. The other one is Grantchester, a Masterpiece Mystery about a hot priest who solves crime (but that was sort of a given, no?).

I share Stalter’s bio for a few reasons. For starters, it makes me smile, and sharing a smile is a tried-and-true way to score a friend (cha-ching!).

*Meg Stalter once again proved her knack for making a first impression at her Emmy’s debut*

On top of that, it is a good example of someone who knows how to make a first impression. I expect to have made a great impression by the time I finish this, but to ensure things got started on the right foot, hedging my bets if you will, I thought it best to leave the preamble to someone at the top of the trade.

Stalter’s bio also proves a simple point; it is not merely what you say that counts, but how you say it.

I am something of a sub-par reader. I love to read, it is just not my biggest strength (doesn’t mean it can’t be (growth mindset)! Just facing today’s facts). I don’t think I read enough as a child, so now I am slow and I usually fall asleep.

But I get by. I power through my class readings, I keep a book on my bedside table, and I get my news through the radio (that and two free tickets to the Hoppin’ John’s Fiddler’s Convention–it pays to be tuned into WUNC on Saturday nights at 10. Cha-ching!).

This relationship with reading influences my writing style. When I write, I try to keep my readers awake. Not with what I write — I have full faith in the topic at hand’s capacity to speak for itself — but with the way I write it.

My past experience writing for a published paper was in high school, where I spent four years as co-editor of the “Hustle and Bustle” page. I authored a satirical advice column in which troubled high schoolers (me) could send their personal woes to someone who would publish them for the whole school to read (also me). I like writing as a secondary form of chatting.

*My senior year, I retitled my column “Dear Addy,” after the well-known advice column “Dear Abby.”*

And so it is with this laudable writing background that I report to you on the groundbreaking discoveries from one of the top research universities in the U.S.

Why write for a research blog? Research is interesting. Research makes the world go round. Just ask a freshman. They all came here for the “research opportunities,” as did all the other freshmen at all the other universities.

Before I sign off, I will let you know where you might catch me in my free time. This is a key element of the standard student bio, and I am prone to severe FOMO, so let me get right to it.

I am a sophomore from Hickory, North Carolina hoping to major in Public Policy and minor in Math. In my free time you might catch me listening to NPR, jogging, potting, singing to myself, making a smoothie, telling people about my smoothie, spamming my contacts for an ice cream date, or for the not-so-lucky, trying my best at Appalachian-style fiddle.

By Addie Geitner, Class of 2025

Benefits of Childhood Mental Health Intervention ‘Ripple Across Generations’

By Guest Post

On July 22, 2022

In Behavior/Psychology, Field Research, Global Health

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health challenges were the leading cause of poor life outcomes in young people. As many as 1 in 5 U.S. children aged 3 to 17 have a mental, emotional, developmental or behavioral disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, that crisis has been exacerbated. Symptoms of depression and anxiety for children and adolescents have doubled during the pandemic.

Seventy percent of U.S. public schools reported an increase in the number of children seeking mental health services during the pandemic and many have struggled to meet the needs of those students, according to the latest federal data.

As the Biden administration and Congress consider policies and programs that could help curb these mental health challenges that children face, a group of Duke researchers may already have one answer.

Eighteen years after administering an intensive childhood intervention program called Fast Track, a group of Sanford School of Public Policy scholars has found that it not only proved effective at reducing conduct problems and juvenile arrests in childhood, it also improved family outcomes when the original children grow up and become parents themselves.

Their followup findings, which appeared in June in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, show that girls who received the Fast Track intervention during first through 10th grades had improvements in several aspects of their family environments 18 years later.

Specifically, Fast Track reduced food insecurity in the mothers’ family environments, and lessened the mothers’ depression, alcohol and drug problems, and their use of corporal punishment.

“We knew the Fast Track early childhood intervention was successful at reducing aggressive behavior in childhood and criminal arrests in young adulthood,” said Drew Rothenberg, research scientist at the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy and lead author on the study.

“This research demonstrates that the early intervention doesn’t just benefit the children receiving the services,” he added. “It also improves the family environments those child form as adults, benefiting their own children. In other words, it looks like the effects of early intervention can ripple across generations.”

According to Rothenberg, the beneficial effects of Fast Track are just as large as those seen in prevention programs that only affect a single generation.

“Impressively, these beneficial effects were also almost as big as those seen immediately after the end of the Fast Track intervention 18 years earlier,” Rothenberg said. “Therefore, for mothers, Fast Track’s effects appear powerful across two generations of homes and are much longer-lasting than previous research suggested.”

“Surprisingly, the benefits of the Fast Track intervention on family environments formed as adults found for mothers did not extend to fathers,” said study co-author Jennifer Lansford, research professor at the Duke Sanford School of Public Policy and director of the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy.

Jennifer Lansford, Director of Duke Center for Child and Family Policy

“Even in contemporary society, women are still tasked with a greater proportion of child-rearing responsibility, and still more often called to create family routines and climate,” Lansford said. “Therefore, the beneficial Fast Track effects on reducing corporal punishment and increasing family food security may emerge only in mothers because mothers are still primarily responsible for the provision of parenting and procurement of resources for family meals, and consequently more likely to benefit from such intervention.”

Rothenberg said the findings suggest childhood mental health interventions can break maladaptive cycles and promote the development of healthy family environments when those children grow up and start their own families.

“With this evidence, we also demonstrate that investing in early childhood interventions won’t just pay off for today’s children but also for generations of children to come,” Rothenberg said.

Researchers surveyed 400 Fast Track participants who were now parents at age 34 about aspects of their current family environment. They wanted to assess whether parent substance use problems, depression, romantic partner violence, parent warmth, parent use of physical aggression and corporal punishment, family chaos, and food insecurity were better for adults who had participated in Fast Track as children than for adults who had been in the control group.

“We designed the Fast Track program to improve emotional awareness and interpersonal competence among children at high risk for peer conflict, antisocial and delinquent behaviors and life-course failure,” said study co-author Kenneth Dodge, the William McDougall Distinguished Professor of Public Policy Studies at the Duke Sanford School of Public Policy. Dodge is a member of the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group that created the Fast Track program.

Participants had been drawn from high-risk elementary schools in Durham, North Carolina, Nashville, Tennessee, rural Pennsylvania and Seattle, Washington. Starting in first grade, students were randomly assigned to either receive Fast Track or be followed as a control group. Students who received the Fast Track intervention received social skills training, tutoring, and a social-emotional learning curriculum taught by teachers. Their parents received training in techniques to help the students manage their behavior.

The Fast Track project has been supported since 1991 by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Grants R18MH48043, R18MH50951, R18MH50952, R18MH50953, R01MH062988, K05MH00797, and K05MH01027; National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Grants R01DA016903, K05DA15226, RC1DA028248, and P30DA023026; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant R01HD093651; and Department of Education Grant S184U30002.

CITATION: “Intergenerational Effects Of The Fast Track Intervention on the Home Environment: A Randomized Control Trial,” William Andrew Rothenberg, Jennifer E. Lansford, Jennifer Godwin, Kenneth A. Dodge, William E. Copeland, Candice L. Odgers, Robert J. McMahon, Natalie Goluter, and Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, June 15, 2022. DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.13648

Post by Sarah Brantley, communications director for Duke’s Center for Child and Family Policy

Symposium Explores How People and Nature are Inextricably Entwined

By Guest Post

On May 13, 2022

In Animals, Anthropology, Climate/Global Change, Environment/Sustainability, Global Health, Students

The massive Keeler Oak, a white oak (*Quercus alba*) in New Jersey.

An April symposium at Grainger Hall, People and Nature, brought a diverse set of speakers, both from Duke and other U.S. institutions, to examine the relationship between human culture and land and to discuss pressing issues such as environmental justice. The session was organized by PhD students Nicholas School of the Environment and the biology department.

Professor Paul Manos of Duke Biology told us how oaks, ubiquitous tree species in temperate regions, can make people think about nature. A walk in the woods looking at the different oaks can result in a fascinating journey of natural history. For those who are curious enough, an inquiry into the lives of oaks will take them deep into topics such as evolutionary history, leaky species boundaries, plant-animal interactions, among others, Manos said. Keeping true to the theme of the symposium, Manos explored some hypotheses about the first time that humans had contact with oaks, and how this relationship unfolded ever since.

Associate Professor Orou G. Gaoue of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, took us through a detailed case study of human and plant interactions with long-term data from the country of Benin, in Africa. He showed how the harvest of the African mahogany (Khaya senegalensis) affects human demography and even the marriage dynamics of the Fulani people, with many other insights into the intertwined relationship of the locals and their harvest.

Central to the morning sessions were the rights of nature and the granting of personhood to non-humans, which is common in the cosmology of many indigenous cultures. For instance, Andrew Curley, assistant professor at the University of Arizona, mentioned in his talk that the O’odham people in the Sonoran Desert confer the Saguaro cactus personhood status. His talk exposed how colonial dynamics have created climate catastrophes and drought around the Colorado River, how indigenous peoples have to navigate these foreign systems, and how they understand their relationship with the land and water.

Michelle Carter, a first-year Masters of Environmental Management (MEM) student at Duke, examined the feasibility of the rights of nature in the US legal system. These rights allow certain natural features (e.g. rivers) to stand as a sole party in litigation and recover damages on their behalf. However, effective application and the enforcement of policy have been lacking.

The second part of the symposium focused on environmental justice. Duke Ph.D. student Maggie Swift presented a land acknowledgement which was divided into three parts: recognition of the violent history of the past; an understanding of the present with a celebration of the lives and achievements of current indigenous peoples; and a call to action so that participants were encouraged to financially support native-led organizations. Links for donations and more information can be found on the symposium website. The land acknowledgement was followed by a brief presentation on the project Unearthing Duke Forest that explores the human history surrounding Duke Forest.

Why is it important to jointly consider people and nature in your work? What insights do you gain in your work by taking this approach?
People & NAture

Christine Folch of Duke Cultural Anthropology

Assistant professor Christine Folch, from Duke’s Department of Cultural Anthropology provided an analysis of the discourse around climate change. At the center was the question “do you believe in climate change?” which has ingrained the element of doubt and the ability of the speaker to say “no, I don’t.”

Associate professor Louie Rivers III, from NC State University, gave a talk on perceived environmental risks and their influence on social justice. He pointed out that these questions could be dismissed by certain groups such as black farmers, who are concerned and disproportionally affected by environmental issues but might not relate to how the question is addressed.

Sherri White-Williamson, Environmental Justice Policy director at NC Conservation Network, explained the concept of environmental justice and provided concrete examples of how certain policies (e.g. federal housing/lending policies or interstate highway systems) can create inequalities that leave communities of color to bear the exposure of environmental degradation. She also made us aware that this year is the 40^th anniversary of the birth of the US environmental justice movement that started when an African-American community in Warren County, North Carolina organized to fight a hazardous waste landfill.

No exploration of people and nature would be complete without including the seas. A team of three students at the Duke University Marine Lab, undergrad Maddie Paris, second-year MEM Claire Huang, and Ph.D. student Rebecca Horan, presented two case studies of social and ecological outcomes linked to education and outreach interventions conducted in tropical marine environments.

Their first case study was on turtle education in Grenada, West Indies. Here a 10-week summer program for local children ages 9-12 created an improved understanding of marine turtle biology and its connection to the health of the ocean and their communities. The second case study was a 4-week training course for fisher people and fisheries officers in Mtwara, Tanzania. These participants increased their skills in monitoring the local reefs and were better equipped to educate their communities on marine environmental issues.

The symposium ended with two open questions for the audience, which should be considerations for anyone doing environmental research: Why is it important to jointly consider people and nature in your work? What insights do you gain in your work by taking this approach?

Guest post by Rubén Darío Palacio, Ph.D. 2022 in Conservation Biology from the Nicholas School of the Environment, and science director of conservation non-profit Fundacion Ecotonos in Colombia.

Deep Conversations Put the ‘Care’ in Healthcare

By Guest Post

On October 11, 2021

In Guest Post, Medicine, Science Communication & Education, Students

The Duke Medical Ethics Journal (DMEJ) is a golden opportunity to listen to the ways the world around me hurts and heals. It means asking questions – who is being marginalized in my communities? Where is the injustice in my community? What can I do about it? And when these questions feel too big and too heavy, DMEJ means having a community of mentors, friends, and soul-strengtheners to ask the questions with me. Some of my most cherished experiences at Duke since freshman year have been those rooted in exploring the humanities.

Engaging with the field of ethics through the Kenan Institute of Ethics Living Learning Community as well leading the Duke Medical Ethics Journal (DMEJ) has given me a strong appreciation for the utilization of humanities in healthcare.

Before I saw the Spring 2021 DMEJ edition come together, I never realized how deeply identity could influence health. I had always thought of peoples’ identity in terms of cultural identity, not enough in terms of fertility or neurodiversity, until I read the pieces written by my fellow DMEJ writers. I realized more than ever that healthcare at its deepest level is not just about the biomedical model but it’s also about care, care for the values the lives of its practitioners and patients.

COVID-19 has also naturally brought up questions on the importance of mask-wearing, social distancing, and now, vaccinating. Though most students interested in entering the healthcare field typically fall on one side of the argument, it is safe to say that all of us had to take up more responsibility for ourselves and for others. What does it take to do what is right? The ethics (and effort!) surrounding this responsibility makes for deep conversations puts the “care” in healthcare. And these deep conversations are what DMEJ is all about.

Our upcoming issue, winter 2021, will be about the post-covid era. What does a return to normalcy even mean in an age where normal has been changed forever? And two of our bloggers have already written deeply affecting pieces on post pandemic mental health. To stay up to date on what DMEJ is up to, subscribe to our listserv. We’re always looking for more voices to join our conversation. 🙂

Guest post by Sibani Ram, Class of 2023

Child Protective Services Do Work, But They Are Unevenly Distributed

By Guest Post

On July 19, 2021

In Behavior/Psychology, Policy, Statistics

Roughly one in seven New York City children suffer confirmed mistreatment at home and many are placed in foster care. But relatively few children are permanently separated from their parents by the termination of parental rights, according to new research from Duke University and Rutgers University-Newark.

The data points to a relative success story in the world of child welfare, said Chris Wildeman, a Duke University sociologist and co-author of the research. In New York City, child welfare specialists intervene often in abuse and neglect cases but are often able to avoid terminating parental rights, even when they do remove the child from the home, Wildeman added.

Wildeman’s co-authors are Kieran Healy, a Duke sociologist, and Frank Edwards and Sara Wakefield from the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University – Newark.

In New York City, roughly two in five children will be involved in an investigation by their local child protective services office; one in seven will experience confirmed maltreatment, one in 35 will be placed in foster care. (Dallas Clemons)

“I think the core takeaway there is that New York is the prime example of taking maltreatment seriously and intervening as a system,” Wildeman said. “But also taking seriously the idea that permanent termination of parental rights totally closes off any chance for family reunification, so only doing it in the most extreme circumstances.”

The peer-reviewed study, appearing the week of July 19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, derives from an analysis of child welfare data from the nation’s 20 most populous counties. (The New York data is from all five boroughs because the entire city’s child welfare system is under a single governing umbrella)

The study looked at how often children were the subject of a child services investigation; suffered confirmed mistreatment, were placed in foster care, and removed permanently from their homes through the termination of parental rights.

Nationally, roughly one in three children will be involved in an investigation by their local child protective services office; one in eight will experience maltreatment, one in 17 will be placed in foster care and one in 100 will have parental rights terminated, according to the study.

In New York City, roughly two in five children will be involved in an investigation by their local child protective services office; one in seven will experience confirmed maltreatment, one in 35 will be placed in foster care and one in 600 will have parental rights terminated, according to the study.

Nationally, one in 100 parents will have their rights terminated, while in New York that figure is one in 600. (Dallas Clemons)

“The system is functioning more the way many child welfare advocates would like it to function,” Wildeman said. “Make sure you identify maltreatment, but attempt to use services rather than foster care treatment, at least initially, and then only terminating parental rights in only the most extreme circumstances. And trying to be aware of racial disparities in those processes.”

CITATION: “Contact with Child Protective Services is Pervasive but Unequally Distributed by Race and Ethnicity in Large US Counties,” PNAS, July 19, 2021. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2106272118

Post by Eric Ferreri , Duke University Communications

A New Algorithm for “In-Betweening” images applied to Covid, Aging and Continental Drift

By Guest Post

On April 14, 2021

In Computers/Technology, Data, Faculty, Guest Post, Mathematics, Physics, Visualization

Collaborating with a colleague in Shanghai, we recently published an article that explains the mathematical concept of ‘in-betweening,’in images – calculating intermediate stages of changes in appearance from one image to the next.

Our equilibrium-driven deformation algorithm (EDDA) was used to demonstrate three difficult tasks of ‘in-betweening’ images: Facial aging, coronavirus spread in the lungs, and continental drift.

Part I. Understanding Pneumonia Invasion and Retreat in COVID-19

The pandemic has influenced the entire world and taken away nearly 3 million lives to date. If a person were unlucky enough to contract the virus and COVID-19, one way to diagnose them is to carry out CT scans of their lungs to visualize the damage caused by pneumonia.

However, it is impossible to monitor the patient all the time using CT scans. Thus, the invading process is usually invisible for doctors and researchers.

To solve this difficulty, we developed a mathematical algorithm which relies on only two CT scans to simulate the pneumonia invasion process caused by COVID-19.

We compared a series of CT scans of a Chinese patient taken at different times. This patient had severe pneumonia caused by COVID-19 but recovered after a successful treatment. Our simulation clearly revealed the pneumonia invasion process in the patient’s lungs and the fading away process after the treatment.

Our simulation results also identify several significant areas in which the patient’s lungs are more vulnerable to the virus and other areas in which the lungs have better response to the treatment. Those areas were perfectly consistent with the medical analysis based on this patient’s actual, real-time CT scan images. The consistency of our results indicates the value of the method.

The COVID-19 pneumonia invading (upper panel) and fading away (lower panel) process from the data-driven simulations. Red circles indicate four significant areas in which the patient’s lungs were more vulnerable to the pneumonia and blue circles indicate two significant areas in which the patient’s lungs had better response to the treatment. (Image credit: Gao et al., 2021)

We also applied this algorithm to simulate human facial changes over time, in which the aging processes for different parts of a woman’s face were automatically created by the algorithm with high resolution. (Image credit: Gao et al., 2021. Video)

Part II. Solving the Puzzle of Continental Drift

It has always been mysterious how the continents we know evolved and formed from the ancient single supercontinent, Pangaea. But then German polar researcher Alfred Wegener proposed the continental drift hypothesis in the early 20th century. Although many geologists argued about his hypothesis initially, more sound evidence such as continental structures, fossils and the magnetic polarity of rocks has supported Wegener’s proposition.

Our data-driven algorithm has been applied to simulate the possible evolution process of continents from Pangaea period.

The underlying forces driving continental drift were determined by the equilibrium status of the continents on the current planet. In order to describe the edges that divide the land to create oceans, we proposed a delicate thresholding scheme.

The formation and deformation for different continents is clearly revealed in our simulation. For example, the ‘drift’ of the Antarctic continent from Africa can be seen happening. This exciting simulation presents a quick and obvious way for geologists to establish more possible lines of inquiry about how continents can drift from one status to another, just based on the initial and equilibrium continental status. Combined with other technological advances, this data-driven method may provide a path to solve Wegener’s puzzle of continental drift.

The theory of continental drift reconciled similar fossil plants and animals now found on widely separated continents. The southern part after Pangaea breaks (Gondwana) is shown here evidence of Wegener’s theory. (Image credit: United States Geological Survey)

The continental drift process of the data-driven simulations. Black arrow indicates the formation of the Antarctic. (Image credit: Gao et al., 2021)

The study was supported by the Department of Mathematics and Physics, Duke University.

CITATION: “Inbetweening auto-animation via Fokker-Planck dynamics and thresholding,” Yuan Gao, Guangzhen Jin & Jian-Guo Liu. Inverse Problems and Imaging, February, 2021, DOI: 10.3934/ipi.2021016. Online: http://www.aimsciences.org/article/doi/10.3934/ipi.2021016

Yuan Gao is the William W. Elliot Assistant Research Professor in the department of mathematics, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.

Jian-Guo Liu is a Professor in the departments of mathematics and physics, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.