Author: Karl Bates Page 5 of 18

Director of Research Communications, Duke University

When the Data Get Tough, These Researchers Go Visual

By Karl Bates

On February 10, 2016

In Art, Biology, Field Research, Science Communication & Education, Statistics, Visualization

Ever wondered what a cleaner shrimp can see?

Or how the force of a footstep moves from particle to particle through a layer of sand?

How about what portion of our renewable energy comes from wind versus solar power?

The winning submission, created by Nicholas School PhD candidate Brandon Morrison, illustrates the flow of agricultural and forestry crops from raw materials to consumer products. The colors correspond to the type of crop – brown for wood, green for vegetables, etc. – and the width of the lines correspond to the quantity of the crop. You can check out the full image and caption on the Duke Data Visualization Flickr Gallery.

The answers to these questions and more are stunningly rendered in the entries to the 2016 Student Data Visualization Contest, which you can check out now on the Duke Data Visualization Flickr Gallery.

“Visualizations take advantage of our powerful ability to detect and process shapes to reveal detailed trends that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to see,” said Angela Zoss, Data Visualization Coordinator at Duke Data and Visualization Services (DVS), who runs the contest. “This year’s winners were all able to take very complex topics and use visualization to make them more accessible.”

One winner and two finalists were selected from the 14 submissions on the basis of five criteria: insightfulness, broad appeal, aesthetics, technical merit, and novelty. The submissions represent data from all areas of research at Duke – from politics and health to fundamental physics and biology.

“This year’s entrants showed a lot of sophistication and advanced scholarship,” Zoss said. “We’re seeing more advanced graduate work and multi-year research projects that are really benefiting from visualization.”

Eric Monson, a Data Visualization Analyst with DVS, hopes the contest will inspire more students to consider data visualization when grappling with intricate data sets.

“A lot of this work only gets shared within courses or small academic communities, so it’s exciting to give people this opportunity to have their work reach a broader audience,” Monson said.

Posters of the winning submissions will soon be on display in the Brandaleone Lab for Data and Visualization Services in The Edge on the first floor of Bostock Library.

The second-place entry, by Art History PhD student Katherine McCusker, depicts an archaeological site in Viterbo, Italy. The colored lines indicate the likely locations of buried structures like walls, platforms, and pavement, based on an interpretation of data from ground-penetrating radar (represented by a dark red, yellow, white colormap). You can check out the full image and caption on the Duke Data Visualization Flickr Gallery.

Kara J. Manke, PhD

Post by Kara Manke

Bigger Church = Less Engaged Parishioners

By Karl Bates

On February 3, 2016

In Behavior/Psychology, Faculty, Guest Post

The larger the church, the less likely its members will attend weekly services, a new Duke University study finds.

Joel Osteen's stadium-sized Lakewood Church. That's him on the jumbotron.

Joel Osteen’s stadium-sized Lakewood Church. If you skipped a service like this, would anybody notice?

“People have an increasing detachment from religious organizations, and, somewhat counter intuitively, mega-churches are a reflection of that,” said David Eagle, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke’s Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research.

“These churches are really large – with more than 2,000 people in attendance. By nature they are more anonymous places – your comings and goings aren’t noticed from week to week and you may not face the same encouragement — or pressure — to attend as in a smaller church,” Eagle said.

The study has just appeared in Socius – a journal of the American Sociological Association.

Across the religious spectrum, Eagle’s study found a reverse correlation between church size and attendance of its members. For example: about 40 percent of members of white, mainline Protestant churches with a membership of 50 people attended services each week. But at a far larger white, mainline Protestant church of 10,000 members, just about 25 percent attend weekly services.

Probability that a person will attend church and church size, controlling for age, gender, and class (shaded regions indicate the range of statistically possible values)

From the study: probability that a person will attend church and church size, controlling for age, gender, and class (shaded regions indicate the range of statistically possible values)

Small, black Protestant churches of 50 members reported a 50 percent rate of weekly attendance, the study found. But at a far larger church of 10,000 members, just 40 percent of members attended weekly.

There are other factors at work as well, Eagle said. Families with little free time are more apt to attend large churches where they can pick and choose their involvements without feeling obligated to take a leadership role, he said.

Eagle’s study, which examines mainline Protestant, black Protestant, evangelical and Roman Catholic churches with as few as 20 members and as many as 25,000, analyzes data from the U.S. General Social Survey and the National Congregations Study, the latter led by Mark Chaves, a Duke professor of sociology, religion and divinity.

During political election cycles, many wonder about the political influence that megachurch pastors might exercise from the pulpit. But those pastors may struggle to reach their members, given the tendency for attendees of those larger churches to attend only sporadically. And in larger churches clergy often shy away from expressing extreme political stands from the pulpit, Eagle said.

“If you have 10,000 people in your pews, it’s less likely that everyone is of one political persuasion.”

Guest post by Eric Ferreri, News and Communications

A New Partnership with IIT in India

By Karl Bates

On January 27, 2016

In Computers/Technology, Engineering, Faculty, Guest Post

On January 5, just a year after President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed to deepen engagement between the United States and India, a group of Duke colleagues and I found ourselves on the brand new campus of IIT Gandhinagar, in Gujarat, India.

Duke Vice Provost for Research Larry Carin, left, tours the IIT Gandhinagar campus with Director Sudhir Jain.

We were part of an agreement between the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) to provide technical support for the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT).

Our van was met by Sudhir Jain, the exuberant director of this young institution, who was thrilled to welcome us to the university and show us labs, offices and classrooms that will soon be bustling with activity.

Although the campus is partially occupied and remains under construction – with many students and offices still housed at a temporary campus a few miles away – all of us who work at Duke are lately accustomed to the sights and sounds of campus construction, and barely noticed the work taking place all around us.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCEqQyIuykg]

We quickly heard from Jain that Gandhinagar is a new type of IIT, “a technical institute with a twist,” seeking to deliver outstanding technical education within a larger educational framework that emphasizes civic engagement and personal growth and development.

Our week began with a formal opening session, during which representatives of India’s MHRD; Kathryn Stevens, Duke ’92, acting mission chief for USAID India; Larry Carin, Duke’s vice provost for research, and Jain all shared their visions and expectations for Duke’s collaboration with IIT Gandhinagar.

The full group of IIT Gandhinagar leadership and the visiting Duke, RTI delegation.

The full group of IIT Gandhinagar leadership and the visiting Duke, RTI, and USAID delegation.

And then we were off and running for four full days of presentations and workshops.

Duke faculty members Mike Bergin (civil & environmental engineering), Krishnendu Chakrabarty and Kishor Trivedi (electrical & computer engineering) and Debmalya Panigrahi and Sudeepa Roy (computer science) discussed their own research initiatives and explored opportunities for collaboration with IIT researchers, and provided peer coaching and review sessions for IIT Gandhinagar faculty.

In parallel sessions, Larry and Marnie Rhoads, Duke’s director of faculty research and mentoring, worked with IIT Gandhinagar colleagues to review the Institute’s research operations and faculty hiring and review practices.

Minnie Glymph, executive director of communications and marketing at the Pratt School of Engineering, and I shared best practices in global higher ed marketing and communications with our counterparts in Gandhinagar, and spent several days working with them to review their existing activities and publications and begin developing a new strategic communications plan.

And just like that, four days passed in a blink and it was time for us to return to the U.S.

Luckily, a late-evening departure allowed Larry, Minnie and me time to visit the site of “A Better Toilet,” where Duke and RTI International researchers are working to address common sanitation needs in Ahmedabad. (See related post about toilets.)

Guest Post from Laura Brinn, Duke Global Communications

Checking Out a Next-Generation Toilet

By Karl Bates

On January 27, 2016

In Engineering, Environment/Sustainability, Faculty, Field Research, Global Health, Guest Post

(Second in a series from a recent Duke visit to IIT Gandhinagar.)

“That just proves women really do always go to the restroom in pairs!” our tour guides chuckled as my colleague Minnie Glymph and I paused for this photo.

Laura Brinn, left, of Duke Global Communications, and Minnie Glymph of the Pratt School of Engineering lacking privacy.

Jokes aside, their comment had some important truth to it. We were not where we can usually be found, on campus in Durham, where clean water and safe restrooms are abundant.

Instead we were in Ahmedabad, India, where our hosts told us that 25% of the estimated 7.3 million people living in the city’s slums do not have regular access to running water and restroom facilities, even at school or work. In areas where communal toilets are available, people may have to wait in line for 15-20 minutes, as up to 2,000 residents share eight restroom stalls. And, some facilities simply aren’t safe spaces for women and girls. With no other options, many resort to relieving themselves in the open.

The lack of sanitary methods for waste disposal leads to public health problems, including diarrheal disease, which claims a child’s life every three to four minutes in India. These conditions are also linked to high workplace absenteeism rates due to illness and an estimated 15-25% middle school dropout rate (depending on the region) for girls who have reached menstruation and do not have access to private and clean restroom facilities.

The Duke-designed demonstration toilet in Ahmedabad, India.

The RTI- and Duke-designed demonstration toilet in Ahmedabad, India.

The restroom that served as our photo backdrop is an experimental toilet created by researchers at RTI International, Duke and Colorado State University, one of 16 teams funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Reinvent the Toilet Challenge to address sanitation needs on a global scale. (Duke has two funded projects, the Ahmedabad model led by electrical engineering professor Jeff Glass and another system created by civil & environmental engineering professor Marc Deshusses.)

Although Minnie and I visited this toilet where it was developed on a modern university campus in a lush and leafy section of Ahmedabad, restrooms like this one could soon become a common site in Ahmedabad’s slums, as its creators begin testing in real-world situations to help them understand user preferences and potential barriers to adoption.

The challenge of developing a low-cost, low-maintenance toilet that can be widely deployed is significant, requiring expertise in fields such as engineering, disinfection, human behavior, manufacturing and social marketing to make sure the community feels comfortable using the facility.

Brian Stoner of RTI and Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering hosted our visit with his RTI colleague Myles Elledge, and explained that the collaborative effort has brought together not only RTI researchers, but also Duke engineering faculty, Colorado State University combustion experts, local Indian engineering firms and a major Indian women’s union.

[vimeo 123623042 w=500 h=281]

Students in Duke’s Master of Engineering Management program have also contributed design engineering work, developing business models for deploying the toilet in India. The current targeted cost for the self-contained system is $2,500 for a unit serving 30-50 users per day, and the project leaders hope to start testing it in additional field locations by fall 2016.

Although the health benefits of improved sanitation are clear, Stoner and Elledge emphasized that improving safety and dignity are also important outcomes for this work. With much of the engineering work now behind them, they are anxious to better understand the human factors that will determine the toilet’s ultimate success or failure.

For more information about this project and the team behind it, visit abettertoilet.org.

Guest Post from Laura Brinn, Duke Global Communications

OVPR Offering Small Grants to Expand Faculty Research

By Karl Bates

On January 20, 2016

In Computers/Technology, Engineering, Environment/Sustainability, Faculty, Global Health, Guest Post, Medicine

February is fast approaching, and with it comes a number of deadlines for funding opportunities aimed at Duke Faculty interested in expanding their research repertoires. The Office of the Vice Provost for Research is pleased to co-sponsor multiple small grant programs to help Duke Campus Faculty develop research relationships with Duke Health Faculty or Chinese Faculty, respectively. We also wish to promote institutional use of the Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility.

Win a grant to work in the Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility (SMIF) and maybe they’ll let you wear a bunny suit under the orange lights too! (Duke Photography)

“Collaborative Quantitative Approaches to Problems in the Basic and Clinical Sciences” is supported by many offices at Duke, with the goal of encouraging new and enhancing existing research collaborations between the Campus and School of Medicine around quantitative basic and clinical research challenges. Topics in all areas of medical research will be considered, but the area must be of potential interest to external funding agencies. The deadline to submit applications is February 1.

“Collaborative Environmental Research between Duke Campus Faculty and Chinese Collaborators” likewise provides support to Campus Faculty wishing to develop research collaborations, specifically with Chinese faculty interested in environmental science. Use of the Duke Kunshan University facilities is highly encouraged. The deadline to submit applications is February 12.

Lastly, we are also welcoming applications to the 2016 Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility (SMIF) voucher program! SMIF is an interdisciplinary shared resource providing researchers with high quality and cost effective access to advanced materials characterization and fabrication capabilities. The deadline to submit applications is February 15. For more information on SMIF, please visit: https://smif.lab.duke.edu/pdf/SMIFoverview.doc

To view the full list of RFPs, please visit http://research.duke.edu/funding/OVPR-RFPs. For more information on any of the current RFPs, please contact Kelly Lindblom (kelly.lindblom@duke.edu), the Assistant Director of Research Initiatives in the Office of the Vice Provost for Research.

Pace of Aging Story Makes Top Ten

By Karl Bates

On January 11, 2016

In Behavior/Psychology, Biology, Field Research, Genetics/Genomics, Guest Post

A study led by Center for Child and Family faculty fellows Daniel Belsky and Terrie Moffitt which found that some people grow old significantly faster than others, was named the No. 4 news story of 2015 by Science News.

The paper, published the week of July 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, compared a panel of 18 biological measures that may be combined to determine whether people are aging faster or slower than their peers.

Dan Belsky

The data comes from the Dunedin Study, a landmark longitudinal study that has tracked more than a thousand people born in the same town between 1972-73. Health measures like blood pressure and liver function have been taken regularly, along with interviews and other assessments.

“We set out to measure aging in these relatively young people,” said first author Belsky, an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine. “Most studies of aging look at seniors, but if we want to be able to prevent age-related disease, we’re going to have to start studying aging in young people.”

Belsky said the progress of aging shows in human organs just as it does in eyes, joints and hair, but sooner. So, as part of their regular reassessment of the study population at age 38 in 2011, the team measured the functions of kidneys, liver, lungs, metabolic and immune systems. They also measured HDL cholesterol, cardiorespiratory fitness and the length of the telomeres—protective caps at the end of chromosomes that have been found to shorten with age.

Based on a subset of these biomarkers, the research team set a “biological age” for each participant, which ranged from under 30 to nearly 60 in the 38-year-olds.

According to Science News, “The finding tapped into a mystery that has long captivated scientists and the public alike…”

Of Muscles and Men: Synthetic Skeletal Muscle

By Karl Bates

On January 7, 2016

In Biomedical Engineering, Engineering, Guest Post, Medicine

We live in an age where new bionic limb models appear every week and tissues can be 3D-printed. Considering these exciting advances, it should come as no surprise that researchers are coming closer to engineering functional skeletal muscle.

Mark Juhas is a graduate student in the biomedical engineering lab of Nenad Bursac.

“We’re trying to engineer skeletal muscle as a whole tissue to make it as functional as possible, as well as recreating other natural aspects of the muscle—most importantly its ability to regenerate,” explained Duke graduate student Mark Juhas. Juhas hopes this research will simulate skeletal muscle accurately enough that others can use the model system to examine treatments for muscular disorders such as muscular dystrophy and myositis.

So far, Juhas has tested the system in lab dishes and in animal models, both of which have shown enormous promise.

In a dish, the stem cells within the engineered muscle were able to regenerate the tissue following injury and recover their forceful contractions. Mice were also implanted with muscle and monitored for the growth of blood vessels and function using an ingenious visualization method that relied on a genetically-encoded calcium indicator containing GFP, a fluorescence protein. The regenerative efficiency of the synthetic muscle cells was shown to be promising as well, with the time needed to regenerate equal to the time necessary in a normal mouse.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6rRBADoPvA]

The next steps for the research are to conduct longer studies. Although the current work is with highly regenerative newborn cell types, Juhas plans on experimenting with aged cell populations next to more thoroughly test the model system’s regenerative potential. Although the model has been tested for force on a rat’s scale so far, the technology may even scale up to hit the market for humans someday.

In the meantime, the system may have enormous use for other researchers who are trying to simulate their own projects more effectively.

Guest post by Sophia Hu, a senior at the North Carolina School of Science and Math

Measuring the Mechanical Forces of Disease

By Karl Bates

On January 5, 2016

In Biology, Biomedical Engineering, Cancer, Cardiology, Guest Post, Physics

“All these complicated diseases that we don’t have a good handle on — they all have this mechanical component. Well why is that?”

Brent Hoffman is an assistant professor of biomedical engineering

This is exactly the question Brent Hoffman, Duke biomedical engineering assistant professor, is helping answer. Many of the common diseases that we fear have a mechanical component. In asthma attacks, a chemical or physical stimulus causes the air channels in the lung to shut as the muscles that control the width of the channel contract– the mechanical component.

Another example is atherosclerosis, commonly known as the hardening of the arteries, the leading killer in developed countries. Instead of air flow, blood flow is affected as the walls of the blood vessels get thicker. Factors such as smoking, being overweight, and having high cholesterol increase the chance of getting this disease. However, examining the mechanical portion, the plaques associated with atherosclerosis tend to occur at certain parts of the blood vessels, where they branch or curve. You can think of it like a hose. When you kink a hose or put your thumb over the nozzle, the fluid flows in a different way. Hoffman said there are similar stories concerning mechanical portions of major diseases, such as muscular dystrophy and breast cancer.

Hoffman’s lab is building tension sensors to measure forces during collective cell migration.

This all sounds very biological, so why is he in the engineering department? As mechanobiology is a new field, there are few tools available for reporting a protein’s shape or its forces inside living cells. Hoffman makes the tools enabling the study of mechanobiology. During Hoffman’s postdoctoral research, he worked on recording forces across proteins in living cells, their natural environment. Now, he’s expanding that technology and using it to do basic science studies to understand mechanobiology.

Hoffman said he hadn’t planned this. From high school, he knew he wanted to be an engineer. As an undergraduate, Hoffman interned at IBM, where he worked on the production of chip carriers using copper-plating. Hoffman was able to apply knowledge, such as changing pH to get various amounts of copper, and make everything perform at optimal performance, but he wanted to know more about the processes.

So he set out to get his Ph.D in process control, which involves deciding how to set all the numbers and dials on the equipment, how large the tank should be, what pressure and temperature should be used, etc. in chemical plants. Hoffman was set on the path to become a chemical engineer. However, during the first week of graduate school, he attended a biophysics talk, in which he understood very little. Biophysics interested Hoffman, so he went from intending to do research on one of the most applied engineering projects on campus to arguably one of the least applied in a week. This was the beginning of his biophysics journey. However, as his Ph. D was much more heavily interested in the physics aspect, Hoffman chose to do his postdoc in cell biology to balance his training. Mixing everything together, he got biomedical engineering.

Hoffman reflects that his decisions were logical, but he had not planned to take the route he did. Hoffman cautions that it is better to have a plan than not because if you do not plan, you won’t know where you are going. However, he advises that since a person learns more about likes and dislikes as one proceeds on their route, students should not be afraid to incorporate what they learn into their plans.

Hoffman’s journey is characterized by finding and doing what he enjoyed. Trained in both the worlds of physics and biology, but never intending to pursue a future in either, Hoffman is uniquely suited for his current position in the revolutionary emerging field of mechanobiology. He is able to put his biology hat on and his physicist hat on for a bit, while the engineer in him is thinking, “is any of this practical?”
“If you had to pick out the key to my success, it would be doing that,” Hoffman said.

Guest Post by Amanda Li, a senior at the North Carolina School of Science and Math

Where Memory Meets Imagination

By Karl Bates

On January 2, 2016

In Behavior/Psychology, Guest Post, Neuroscience

Imagine two scenarios. In the first, one of your close friends is driving down the road when, from behind, they hear the sound of wailing sirens. They pull off onto a sidestreet and ten minutes later they’re back on the road, holding a fresh speeding ticket. In the second, imagine the exact same scenario, but this time it’s not a close friend, it’s a random person who you know nothing about.

Felipe DeBrigard is an assistant professor of philosophy and a member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. (Les Todd, Duke Photo)

This is the kind of scenario philosophy professor Felipe De Brigard might put someone through for his research. But while asking these questions, he would also be using an MRI machine to measure bloodflow in the brain and using the resulting data to think about philosophy.

De Brigard’s research is mostly concerned with this kind of thinking, the imagination of possibilities which never happened, but which could have happened. How many times have you wished you could change something about yourself? “Oh, if only I were two inches taller!?”

The way the brain does this, and what it means, are exactly what De Brigard is thinking about. For the example of speeding tickets, he’s found that in the first scenario, in which, your friend gets a ticket, the imagination activates parts of the brain which are also connected to autobiographical memory. It’s almost like you’re remembering something that happened to yourself.

But in the second scenario, the one with the stranger, he’s found something very different. The imagination activates parts of the brain which are connected to “semantic memory,” the memory of hard facts and data. This process is far more logical, he says.

What does this mean? That’s where the philosophy comes in. He says that memory is not a perfect window into the past, but instead “really good at allowing you to recall what could have been.”

The question which he’s asking now is how similar memory and imagination are and how they interact. It’s opening up new and exciting avenues for research. Research which can only be investigated using De Brigard’s bold, interdisciplinary approach to the mind.

Guest Post by Joe Wiswell, a senior at the North Carolina School of Science and Math

Fighting Malaria with Economics, Coordination

By Karl Bates

On December 29, 2015

In Field Research, Global Health, Guest Post

At the Duke Global Health Institute, their academic base is relatively small; only 375 students have completed global health programs at Duke since 2008. But their partnerships span much farther than the Duke campus.

Randall Kramer (left) is Deputy Director of the Duke Global Health Institute and a Professor of Resource and Environmental Economics in the Nicholas School

Malaria researcher Randall Kramer, the Deputy Director of the Duke Global Health Institute, maintains a network of Priority Partnership Locations (PPLs), so that Duke students can have sustained learning experiences through fieldwork. The network puts Duke’s global health students into communities where these PPLs are based.

Kramer’s own research is on the environmental economics that dictate the success of global initiatives to fight malaria. Kramer highlighted a two-prong approach that he has found to be highly effective in preventing the spread of malaria. The first aspect is prevention; if the disease-carrying mosquitoes cannot reach a host, humans cannot become infected with malaria. Techniques like the employment of bed nets and insecticide spraying inside houses of rural African and Asian villages have proven to be very effective in the prevention of infection. However, these methods are not 100% effective so some infections will occur even when there is excellent prevention activity.

Kramer and colleagues have worked with universities and government officials in Tanzania and Uganda to develop a comprehensive framework for assessing the full range of health, social and environmental risks and benefits associated with alternative malaria control strategies.

Kramer and colleagues have worked with universities and government officials in Tanzania and Uganda to assess malaria control strategies.

The second aspect of fighting malaria is in treatment after infection. In the United States, infections are easily treatable with medications, but in low-income rural communities, one of the biggest problems is the lack of trained medical workers to diagnose malaria and administer medication. There are some drugs that have been very effective in eliminating the malaria parasite once introduced to the human body, , but there still remains a struggle with regard to drug availability and lack of human resources.

Kramer is pleased with the changes in malaria treatment and prevention over the past twenty years, during which malaria related deaths in the world have dropped significantly. But he said there is still a long ways to go before malaria no longer remains a serious health concern. One of the biggest problems that Kramer identified has been the lack of coordination between organizations targeting malaria prevention and treatment. He praised the current organizations in their efforts and funding to help the cause, but suggested that if the organizations were better coordinated, their efforts would save even more lives.

One organization he identified as a great contributor to ending malaria was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has poured millions of dollars into research towards a vaccine for malaria. Kramer is hopeful that nearly complete control of malaria can be achieved in coming decades. He also believes that helping Duke students gain experience in low resource settings will increase their understanding of the global health challenges and solutions.

Guest Post by Ben Fawcett, a senior at the North Carolina School of Science and Math