Author: sa160@duke.edu Page 2 of 4

By Nonie Arora

Carly Krause, graduate student in public policy and business. Credit: Carly Krause

Carly Krause is determined to figure out why some students formally report sexual misconduct while others don’t. Krause is a dual-degree graduate student studying public policy at the Stanford School of Public Policy and the decision sciences at the Fuqua School of Business.

Krause, a California native originally from Los Angeles, received a bachelor’s in business administration from the University of California, Berkeley and has been at Duke for three years. At Berkeley, Krause was heavily involved with the women’s community: she was the president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) at Berkeley.

When the time came to decide upon a topic for her master’s thesis, Krause decided to reengage with women’s issues and approached the Duke University Women’s Center as a client for her project. From then-director Ada Gregory, Krause learned that the Women’s Center was deeply interested in learning why only some students choose to report sexual misconduct through the formal process. They also wanted to know what factors bring students in to the Women’s Center or keep them from using their services.

Krause began digging deeper into these issues. In the past, these types of questions had only been asked through surveys. Krause knew there was only so much information that could be gleaned from a survey without follow-up questions, and that students generally did not answer the free response questions. Instead of a survey, she chose to do in-depth interviews with about twenty students that she sought out by advertising on campus mailing lists and posting fliers in women’s restrooms. Krause said that her data set of twenty interviews meets the criteria for a solid qualitative study. According to Krause, the sample size also sends a signal to the university that this issue is important to the student body.

Duke University Women’s Center. Credit: Duke Student Affairs

After her research report is completed this year, it will go to the Women’s Center. From there, a distilled set of recommendations will hopefully be brought before the university administrators, Krause explained. Krause hopes that the Women’s Center will be able to make some of the changes that have come up. These will be things that students want but may not be on the Women’s Center radar quite yet, according to Krause. “I really hope that if there are recommendations that they feel are worthwhile, they will have the resources and manpower to implement them,” Krause said.

“On university side, I hope that administrators understand that the current process is re-traumatizing and disincentives students from coming forward to the point where we are only getting the select few that are so upset and traumatized that this is their only resort. I think that the process is really doing a disservice to the students,” Krause said.

Krause emphasized that when the university designs policies for sexual misconduct there are multiple competing tensions, including protecting students, creating an equitable environment for everyone and promoting the idea of a safe campus environment.

Why Cute Babies are a Cognitive Illusion

By sa160@duke.edu

On February 11, 2014

In Behavior/Psychology, Lecture, Neuroscience

By Nonie Arora

Daniel Dennett, Co-Director Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, spoke last week to a packed room at Duke University’s annual Mind, Brain, and Behavior lecture. He said that The Hard Problem of Consciousness, which describes how we have subjective conscious experiences, rests on a series of straightforward mistakes.

“The Hard Problem is a cognitive illusion,” Dennett said.

Cartesian Theater. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Dennett’s conclusion rests on two tenets: (1) there is no Cartesian theater and (2) there is no second transduction. The Cartesian theater is an image of a place where the show happens; Dennett said it is where the decisions get made, according to some philosophers.

The second transduction is the idea that the nervous system first converts outer stimuli to neural signals and then the brain translates these signals to some other medium of consciousness, as originally suggested by Descartes. Some theorists still believe that there is a second transduction into a physical medium in the brain that has not been identified, but according to Dennett’s book Kinds of Minds, this idea is a myth.

Dennett said that the features in our brain are more similar to DVDs than to cinema films. They are not iconic. If you show a caveman a DVD, what will he think? He’ll think: where are the mini pictures, where is the sound? Anybody who thinks that there is a Hard Problem is making the analogous naive error about consciousness, Dennett explained.

Depiction of consciousness. Credit: New Yorker 1969 Saul Steinberg

We are the “unwitting creators of fiction,” he said. “Babies are not inherently cute. They’re cute because we adore them. Shapes of babies faces stimulate nurturing behavior… This is an evolved adaptation. We misinterpret an inner reaction as an outer cause,” he said.

He believes that we project our innate predispositions into the manifest world. Thus, we have a propensity to think that babies are cute. “We have expectations about our expectations,” he said. “Not only do we feel the urge to reach out and cuddle, we expect to feel that urge. Our satisfaction of that expectation confirms our perception of cuteness of the baby.”

Interested in hearing more from Dennett?

Learn more about the illusion of consciousness or why babies aren’t actually cute.

Student Melissa Chieffe: Budding Conservation Biologist

By sa160@duke.edu

On February 5, 2014

In Animals, Biology, Field Research, Lemurs, Students

By Nonie Arora

Melissa Chieffe, a Junior Biology major, grew up outside Cleveland, Ohio and arrived at Duke enthusiastic about following a pre-vet path. As a freshman, she began volunteering at the Duke Lemur Center as a technician assistant. Through her work, she became interested in conservation in Madagascar and decided to apply to OTS – South Africa.

A map of Chieffe’s travels. Credit: Melissa Chieffe using Google Maps. (click on map to learn more)

Through OTS – South Africa, she had the opportunity to travel all around the region and work on three group research projects, focusing mainly on ecology and conservation in the Kruger National Park.

Melissa Chieffe. Credit: Liza Morse

In the first, she collected data for the Kruger long-term research initiative on vegetation changes caused by elephants. Specifically, she honed in on damage done to AppleLeaf trees (Philenoptera violacea) and assessed damage done to 175 trees of that species in the Kruger National Park. The study looked at bark stripping and toppling of trees caused by elephants. Bark stripping happens when elephants rub their tusks on trees; if the elephants remove too much mark the trees are more likely to die, according to Chieffe.

From their study, her team observed a bottleneck in tree size: the elephants generally knocked trees over before they could reach their mature height. Their preliminary data indicated that higher elephant population densities – combined with frequent burnings in the savannah – made it harder for trees to reach the mature stage.

In their independent research project, Chieffe and her group had the opportunity to work with a population of captive elephants. The elephant population in the Kruger National Park has been growing exponentially since the termination of culling operations in the 1990s, which is causing problems for the vegetation and the nearby rural farms, according to Chieffe. The elephants are known to destroy crops, fences, and storage facilities. The students looked into using bee hives as a deterrent for elephants. Chieffe explained that beehive fences could have great applications for conservation through community based conservation initiatives.

They used the sound of bees buzzing & the scent of honey to stand in as surrogates for bee hives. Wild elephants exhibited defensive retreating behaviors when exposed to the bee sounds and scents.

Chieffe learns to use camera traps (above) and photo of lion cubs taken by a camera trap (below). Credit: Melissa Chieffe

Chieffe learned to use camera traps (above) and made a photo of lion cubs with a camera trap (below). Credit: Melissa Chieffe

In her faculty field project, Chieffe worked with Professor Jeremy Bolton, an expert in the field, and Professor Tali Hoffman from the University of Cape Town to study camera traps. Chieffe’s team set up four camera traps at five different watering holes, which are known to act as “nodes of activity” for wildlife, to compare efficacy of two types of camera traps: field scan and motion sensor. Camera traps can be used to to record endangered animals and to survey biodiversity of an area.

“I enjoyed living in nature reserves, the national park, constantly surrounded by amazing researchers and scientists and others who are involved in conservation management. It was inspiring to live near them. We also got to present our findings to park management, which was awesome,” Chieffe said.

The program has helped her further her ambitions in conservation biology.

“I thought it was a dream [to become a conservation biologist]. But meeting people who are actually doing what I now want to do has made it seem realistic,” Chieffe said. She hopes to continue with her research in South Africa on elephants and vegetation this summer.

Beers with Bob — Without Beer

By sa160@duke.edu

On February 3, 2014

In Cardiology, Science Communication & Education, Students

By Nonie Arora

My living group, Round Table, had the opportunity to meet up with Dr. Bob Lefkowitz in his office for “Beers with Bob without Beer.” Arnab Chatterjee, a Pratt sophomore and one of our members, works in his research lab and arranged the meet-up…and later dropped the beer from our plans.

We enjoyed being immersed in Dr. Lefkowitz’s office. We saw the jersey, hanging from the “rafters”, that Coach K presented to him last year amidst cheers of “He’s so smart” from the Cameron Crazies.

He showed us a video – three times – of the first pitch he threw out for the Durham Bulls baseball game.

Dr. Lefkowitz’s biggest piece of advice to us all was to eat a square of chocolate every day. He jokingly attributes part of his Nobel prize to the threshold effect of upping his chocolate consumption from two squares a week to one a day just two months before receiving the call from Stockholm. That’s one recipe for success that I can get behind!

Round Table meets with Dr. Bob Lefkowitz. (Nonie’s just to the left of Bob in red top.)

Duke Students Travel to D.C. to Present Findings to FDA

By sa160@duke.edu

On May 6, 2013

In Genetics/Genomics, Science Communication & Education, Students

By Nonie Arora

Duke students outside the FDA. Evelyna Kliassov, Ryan Gimple, Jenae Logan, Hiruni Amarasekara, Biqi Zhang, Selina Chen and Akash Shah. Credit: Huntington Willard

Last month, Duke seniors presented findings on noninvasive prenatal testing at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Washington D.C.

The students explained to government officials that noninvasive prenatal testing requires only a blood sample from a pregnant woman. Current tests, such as amniocentesis, involve extracting cells from the placenta or fluid surrounding the fetus.

Instead, with the new technology labs genetically sequence fetal, cell-free DNA from in the mother’s blood to test for certain disorders. The method can detect when a fetus does not have the normal number of chromosomes. Specifically, it can detect abnormalities in chromosomes 13, 18 and 21, which can lead to disorders such as Down’s Syndrome.

The technology can also identify some fetal, sex-linked disorders and certain single-gene mutations. It is reliable after seven weeks of pregnancy, the students reported.

The presentation was a final project of the Genome Sciences & Policy capstone course, which leads to students earning a certificate in the field.

The students said Duke geneticist Hunt Willard and Dr. Robert Cook-Deegan, the professors for the course, chose noninvasive prenatal testing as the capstone topic because it is a new and rapidly growing field.

“Our professors wanted us to have a feel for what it’s like to research technology while it’s happening, while decisions are being made about whether it’s accurate and reliable,” said Biqi Zhang, one of the students in the class.

To investigate the scientific basis for noninvasive prenatal testing, its challenges, the active stakeholders and associated ethical considerations, these students interviewed individuals involved with different aspects of the technology.

“We had to go out and connect with many well-established professionals in related fields. It was exciting to develop skills that you normally don’t inside the classroom,” said Selina Chen, another student in the course.

“We had the opportunity to contact researchers and CEOs of companies to gain a comprehensive understanding of the technology,” Zhang added.

Evelyna Kliassov presenting on cost-effectiveness of noninvasive prenatal testing to the FDA. Credit: Huntington Willard.

The students said that the technology can and will fundamentally alter prenatal medicine. Throughout the semester, they have gained a nuanced understanding of its complexities and the viewpoints of many different stakeholders involved, from technology startup CEOs to primary care physicians.

“It was most exciting being able to go into the real world and see how this technology is being clinically implemented,” said capstone student Ryan Gimple.

“Traveling to the FDA was definitely nerve-wracking, for me at least,” capstone student Hiruni Amarasekara said. “We wanted to present a comprehensive report of the technology so that they could use this information in their decision making process on whether to recommend the test in the future. It was hard to tell what the FDA was thinking as we were presenting our information.”

The FDA has not yet stated a position on use of noninvasive prenatal testing.

Not your typical spring break

By sa160@duke.edu

On April 12, 2013

In Field Research, Genetics/Genomics, Students

By Nonie Arora

Students in front of Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Credit: Bob Cook-Deegan

Seventeen Duke students had a taste of science policy over spring break. We traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with influential scientists and policy makers from a variety of different institutions, from the Genetic Alliance to the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the White House.

The trip clarified for many of us what science policy is like in action, and the winding paths that guide people to this career.

The students contributed to a trip blog, on which they discuss experiences such as seeing Bo Obama, the First Dog (!), outside the White House and “sipping the kool-aid” of genome science at the National Human Genome Research Institute.

The trip was sponsored by Focus and the Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy under the direction of professor Bob Cook-Deegan.

Sharing food beyond the table

By sa160@duke.edu

On April 7, 2013

In Environment/Sustainability, Field Research, Students

By Nonie Arora

Duke Senior Emily McGinty is pioneering an effort to connect campus farms across the country. McGinty, a senior Baldwin Scholar and public policy major from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has been passionate about food issues since high school. On campus, she is also actively engaged in Round Table Selective Living Group and Team Kenan, and is the managing editor for Rival magazine.

Emily braids and hangs garlic after harvest to cure it for longer-term use at the Duke Campus Farm. Credit: Emily McGinty

When she was organizing food-related discussions with Nicole Tocco, a former Duke masters student at the Nicholas School of the Environment and current employee of Bon Appetit Management Company, McGinty had a breakthrough about one of the fundamental problems in campus growing communities. “There was no platform for connecting, no hub for sharing best practices and ideas,” McGinty said. She wanted to create a centralized resource that would enable campus growers to communicate best practices in their investigative agricultural work.

McGinty’s underlying inspiration to create this centralized hub for campus farmers and growers comes from her experience helping develop the Duke Campus Farm. While Duke’s campus farm is only two and half years old, it is well established and strongly documents its own agricultural practices and research. Students work with professors and practitioners around the Triangle to investigate problems from crop science to building construction. The Duke Campus Farm community is also committed to intentional community building. McGinty explained, “It’s about developing reciprocal relationships. It’s very much a process – not just ‘making friends.’ But you can call it a professional site visit or hopping over to say hey to a neighbor. We’re all about building a strong community and learning from each other.”

She said she feels privileged to work in an area where sharing ideas has no drawbacks. “A fundamental piece of our desire to create a central hub is that we [campus farmers and gardeners] are in a remarkable situation where we have nothing to lose by sharing business plans. Your average corporation cannot share all their business plans and how they function the way they are, but we only benefit from ideas spreading,” McGinty said. “We can share everything from the structure of our board of advisors to parameters used for growing 500 feet of potatoes.”

Popular sungold tomatoes are packed for the Duke Campus Farm’s trip to market. Credit: Emily McGinty

Her team started by building an online platform where people across several college campuses could become members. They began with an online document, where members could upload their research practices in sustainable agriculture. Since then, they have gone through multiple iterations to find the best online home for the hub, which is still under development.

Over the last 6 months, she has conducted many site visits in North and South Carolina to pitch the idea and ask questions about how the hub would benefit others. One of McGinty’s major goals is to get students outside of the immediately interested food community to plug in. McGinty said she strongly believes that food work is interdisciplinary and undergraduate and graduate student research isn’t shared enough. She hopes that this website will reenergize original work produced by undergraduates relating to food issues.

Ultimately, McGinty hopes this open source philosophy will help campus farms across the country thrive by building communication networks and promoting evidence-based agriculture.

Student Profile: Arnab Chatterjee

By sa160@duke.edu

On March 28, 2013

In Behavior/Psychology, Global Health, Medicine, Students

By Nonie Arora

Arnab Chatterjee, Duke Student. Credit: Chrislyn Choo

Freshman Arnab Chatterjee, Credit: Chrislyn Choo

Freshman Arnab Chatterjee spent three days in Abu Dhabi developing solutions to health care problems plaguing the Middle East. He travelled to the Global Issues Network conference, hosted by New York University in Abu Dhabi.

The conference pushes undergraduates to develop sustainable action plans to solve global problems on a regional level in just three days. It has a broad reach, from energy, to health, to waste management. The plans are intended as stepping-stones to bringing positive change to the region.

Chatterjee’s small group focused on mental health, which is often disregarded as a legitimate health concern in the Middle East.

“The ruling bodies of the UAE don’t acknowledge that mental health issues are a real problem, so it often gets swept under the rug,” Chatterjee said.

The group initially attempted to avoid a direct discussion of mental health by asking patients about irregularities in their sleeping and eating patterns, which can be early indicators of mental health issues.

Chatterjee’s team discovered that diabetes was one of the top contributors to the UAE’s mortality rate, and an issue that the government was very much invested in addressing. Multiple studies have suggested a correlation between an increase in the rate of depression among diabetes patients, and vice versa. Other work has shown that the mortality rates among patients with diabetes and depression are significantly higher than those with just diabetes, Chatterjee said. But in this region, seeking help for a mental illness is highly stigmatized. Addressing depression by targeting diabetic populations and their families alleviated this stigma somewhat.

Near the end of the conference, his team suggested that a clinical research study be conducted by New York University’s public health institute in the region to address whether patient-family support specialists could be helpful in improving patient outcomes. They planned to screen for depression, but without describing the behavior by name. “People can be offended even by doctors asking questions that imply a patient has depression. It’s a delicate balance between being tactful but remaining effective,” Chatterjee said.

Chatterjee and his team presented their plan to health care providers from Cleveland Clinic’s medical center in Abu Dhabi, government officials, and the press in Abu Dhabi. He said it was well received by most, but that the government officials remarked that they would have preferred even less emphasis on mental health issues.

Beyond this specific project, Chatterjee said that attending the conference gave him a great opportunity to build a global network with other undergraduates with diverse interests. He is interested in medicine and research, works as a research assistant in the Nicolelis Primate Laboratory, and will be working as a Howard Hughes Research fellow this summer.

Thinking Beyond the Grave at Duke-UNC Bioethics Symposium

By sa160@duke.edu

On February 26, 2013

In Medicine, Science Communication & Education, Students

By Nonie Arora

Duke student Meredith Rahman is intrigued by how we justify treatment of the dead for the sake of science. She asked her audience at the Duke-UNC Bioethics Symposium: How can we interact with human remains in an ethical way?

Duke Student Meredith Rahman Presents at Duke-UNC Bioethics Symposium. Credit: Nonie Arora

Rahman began the discussion by explaining how bodies are obtained for use after death. “Historically, there was great fear about grave robbings to further science,” she says, “but that has since calmed down.” Now, many bodies are obtained through donation, and we legitimize the use of bodies through prior consent when the subjects are still alive. In the 1980s however, the Body Farm in Knoxville, TN took unclaimed bodies from medical examiner’s offices to study decomposition, she added.

Rahman discussed what can happen when we can no longer speak for ourselves. There can be tension between the wishes of the deceased and wishes of the family members, and it can be hard to give a voice to those who have already passed away. This is similar to situations in which family members may override do not resuscitate (DNR) orders, Rahman clarified.

There’s a further issue of consent even when a person has signed a donor card to say that they want to donate their body to science: they don’t always know how their body will be used. “It could be an undergraduate student, such as myself, going into the lab and learning basic anatomy, or it could be an MD practicing a specific surgical skill. But when you consent to donate your body to science, you no longer have a say over what happens,” she said.

A plastinated human body exhibited at the Body Worlds show, Museum of Natural History, San Diego, 2009. Credit: Wikicommons. Photograph by Patty Mooney, Crystal Pyramid Productions, San Diego, California.

Some exhibits transform human remains for science education, such as the Body Worlds exhibit, according to Rahman. Body Worlds relies on a technique called plastination, which essentially turns human soft tissue into plastic. The result is a body that is about twenty percent human materials. She said that while these bodies can be effective teaching tools, there are ethical considerations, especially when commercial interests are involved and the primary purpose is public viewing rather than scientific development. The audience was shocked to hear that “slices of human” are available for purchase.

Rahman’s presentation was part of the Duke-UNC Bioethics Symposium, Ethical Frontiers in Research, a student-run conference developed by the Duke Undergraduate Bioethics Society (DUBS) and Carolina Bioethics Scholars (CUBS). This year, the organizations have received funding from the Kenan-Biddle Partnership grant as well as the Kenan Institute for Ethics and the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine. As part of the Kenan-Biddle partnership, they are hosting an ongoing series of dinner discussions on bioethical topics. The next event will be hosted by UNC on Feb. 28; Dr. Steven Gray will discuss how gene therapy clashes with traditional pharmaceutical business models.

As an executive board member for DUBS, I am excited to continue our collaboration with UNC students. Although basketball rivalries may pull us apart, last weekend we found that lively ethical conversations can bring us together.

Finding Consciousness

By sa160@duke.edu

On February 21, 2013

In Lecture, Medicine, Neuroscience

By Nonie Arora

Brain scans of various disorders of consciousness. Credit: Wiki Commons

Can we be certain whether a patient is minimally conscious or in a persistent vegetative state?

What kinds of rights do minimally conscious patients have?

How should minimally conscious patients be treated?

Scientists, ethicists, lawyers and physicians asked these questions at the Finding Consciousness workshop at Duke in January 2013.

Recently, neuroscientists have devised methods to detect consciousness in patients with severe brain injury who may not appear to be aware of themselves and others. But as the science develops so do new ethical dilemmas.

Patients with severe brain injury are often written off, despite growing scientific evidence of potential improvement, said Joseph Fins from Cornell University. Fins gave the annual Nancy Weaver Emerson Lecture sponsored by the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine as part of the workshop, and he focused on the application of neuroethics to the minimally conscious state.

Fins believes that family members of patients are often forced to make decisions about withholding or withdrawing care without complete, understandable information. They are compelled to consider organ donation, even prematurely. In his work, Fins interviews family members of brain injury patients. In one conversation, a mother of a patient described an interaction with a neurologist who called the patient “basically an organ donor now” and said, “He doesn’t have the reflexes of a frog.”

Then, the neurologist urged the mother to consider organ donation — all within 72 hours of the injury. Fins called for patients and family members to be treated with more sensitivity and respect.

Jeremy Fins. Credit: Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities, and History of Medicine

The vegetative state has been seen as medical futility, and the paradigm was “once you’re vegetative, you’re done,” Fins said. However, physicians in the field have begun to see families and patients who have looked vegetative, but then suddenly showed some level of response to stimulus.

While some patients become permanently vegetative, others can become minimally conscious, Fins said, referencing a study where about 40 percent of patients who were diagnosed as vegetative were actually minimally conscious.

“This is unconscionable, but that’s where we are,” he said, adding that much of the disparity could come from disinterest, neglect and marginalization of these patients. People would not accept this level of misdiagnosis in cancer or diabetes care, he said.

It is our obligation to give voice to minimally conscious patients as a basic civil right, Fins said, especially as better methods of identifying these patients and stimulating recovery are likely to come in the future.

Following the people and events that make up the research community at Duke

Author: sa160@duke.edu Page 2 of 4

Krause Hopes to Improve Sexual Misconduct Reporting Process

Why Cute Babies are a Cognitive Illusion

Student Melissa Chieffe: Budding Conservation Biologist

Beers with Bob — Without Beer

Duke Students Travel to D.C. to Present Findings to FDA

Not your typical spring break

Sharing food beyond the table

Student Profile: Arnab Chatterjee

Thinking Beyond the Grave at Duke-UNC Bioethics Symposium

Finding Consciousness