Category: Lecture Page 17 of 20

Solving the mystery of the American psycho

On April 23, 2012

In Behavior/Psychology, Lecture, Neuroscience

by Ashley Mooney

New studies show that psychopathy in criminals is the best predictor of future offenses.

Kent Kiehl, associate professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico, spoke Friday, April 20 on his research on psychopathy—a personality disorder characterized by a persistent pattern of disregard for the rights of others and the rules of society—in prison populations in the United States and Canada. Using a trailer equipped with a mobile MRI unit that could travel to prisons, Kiehl scanned the brains of 2,000 inmate volunteers, which included 200 female offenders and 250 juvenile offenders, in medium and maximum-security prisons in Wisconsin and New Mexico.

Mugshot of Charles Manson, an infamous psychopath. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

“Psychopathy is currently considered the single best predictor of future behavior,” Kiehl said. “If you have a diagnosis of psychopathy and you’re going for parole or something, they view that as a risk factor.”

He found that compared to the average offender, 60 percent of psychopaths reoffend within the next 200 days. Maximum-security juveniles showed a similar pattern: 68 percent of individuals who were at high risk for psychopathy reoffended.

Using images of the brain, Kiehl said he could predict psychopathy as well as one can with clinical error.

“If you have different behavior, you’re going to have a different brain. Just like men and women: different behaviors, different brains.”

Kiehl noted the role of the MAOA gene in violent behavior. He said if one has the gene and comes from a stressful environment, he or she has a significantly elevated risk for committing a violent offense. The gene may contribute to variability in grey matter density in some parts of the brain, which is a risk factor for psychopathy.

Although Kiehl noted the strengths of group therapy in prisons, he said treatment might actually make things worse. Treating psychopaths leads to “violent failure,” meaning that they have a high chance of violent recidivism (relapsing into the behavior).

In juveniles, however, Kiehl said positive reinforcement techniques have reduced recidivism by deemphasizing punishment and treating impulsivity. The kids in the program show a 50 percent reduction in violent recidivism compared to those who undergo normal treatment. Besides the reduction in violent recidivism, the juveniles are also less likely to commit the same types violent crimes, such as murder.

Diagnosing psychopathy and using cost-effective treatments, such as positive reinforcement, can help alleviate the burden of the prison system in the United States.

“We have a problem in the United States: We incarcerate a lot of people,” he said. “We incarcerate more per capita than any other country. It’s expensive—it costs $2.34 trillion per year, which is about the same as the annual estimate for all health care [in the country].”

Non-human Apes Cooperate, Negotiate

By sa160@duke.edu

On April 19, 2012

In Animals, Behavior/Psychology, Lecture

By: Nonie Arora

The Scientist and Nature Credit: Nonie Arora

A large bronze camel resides on Science Drive. Students may think it’s a landmark or a place to take scavenger hunt photos, but the camel has greater meaning.

At the annual Knut Schmidt-Nielsen Memorial Lecture, students learned that the Scientist and Nature statue depicts Schmidt-Nielsen and his research subject for 20 years, the camel. Dr. Brian Hare explained how Schmidt-Nielsen, a pioneer in animal physiology, hoped to learn more about humans by studying camels.

Hare, a professor of evolutionary anthropology, works on what he calls the “exciting problem of human cooperation” by comparing animal species. He is interested particularly in cognition and evolution with goal of understanding what it is that makes us human and how we got that way.

Hare defines cognition as the “the inferential abilities that allow for flexibility and understanding.” He wants to see if species can solve a problem in a new situation with flexible problem solving. Two of the species Hare studies are bonobos and chimpanzees, the two closest living relatives of humans.

People often say that collaboration, negotiation and altruism are unique human traits, Hare said. But he has seen non-human apes exhibit these traits in his experiments. He believes that to see how we are special, we need an accurate assessment of differences between humans and non-human apes.

Many researchers believed non-human chimps could not negotiate when they had conflicting interests because these animals don’t have norms and language like humans. For a while researchers were faced with a paradox: animals were exhibiting cooperative behavior in nature but not in experiments. The problem was the small sample sizes of these trials. When Hare began working at sanctuaries in Africa – Ngamba, Tchimpounga, Lola ya Bonobo – with large numbers of apes, he found evidence of cooperation.

He observed that changing chimp pairings could turn on spontaneous cooperation, and if the chimps were tolerant of their partners, they were much more likely to work together to get the banana.

In another set up, dominant and subordinate apes were paired together. Although subordinates initially refused selfish offers by the dominant ape, after negotiation, a cooperative decision was made within a few minutes in 95 percent of the trials. Hare said he was surprised at the extent of cooperation given the apes’ lack of norms and language.

Bonobos at the Cincinnati Zoo. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Hare also found that bonobos will voluntarily share food with a stranger, but not with a member of their in-group. He hypothesizes this is because sharing with a stranger enables them to expand their social network, but sharing with an in-group member does not significantly alter that relationship.

Hare’s research has shown that traits traditionally associated with humans like tolerance and negotiation, among others, are also present in other non-human apes, suggesting that we may not be as different from them as we thought.

Varmus Encourages Provocative Questions

By sa160@duke.edu

On April 16, 2012

In Biology, Cancer, Genetics/Genomics, Global Health, Lecture, Medicine

By Nonie Arora

“Provocative questions,” the important but non-obvious ones, the questions to be answered by technology that doesn’t exist yet, are one focus of Nobel Laureate Harold Varmus‘s storied career these days.

What environment factors change the risk of various cancers when people move from one geographic area to another?

Why are different tissues so dramatically different in their tendency to develop cancer?

How does obesity contribute to cancer risk?

Harold Varmus, Director of NCI Source: cancer.gov

Varmus, director of the National Cancer Institute, visited Duke April 12 to address the Duke Medical Scientist Training Program 2012 Symposium and to share some of these provocative questions with a full house in Love Auditorium.

Varmus said we are in a period of rapid scientific change because “clinical research and basic research are mingled in a way that is extraordinary.” And while he acknowledged recently flat NIH budgets, he said, “let’s not worry about budgets, let’s worry about opportunities.”

For example, he cited one such scientist who looked for important opportunities, Renato Dulbecco (1914-2012), a virologist from Caltech who died recently. Dulbecco advocated for a systematic approach to sequencing the human genome as early as 1986 despite the many naysayers in the biology community. Varmus called Dulbecco, “a visionary who saw beyond the technology of the day” as he encouraged his audience to think in the spirit of Dulbecco: boldly.

Varmus spoke of how the “precision medicine” of genomics may lead to more accurate diagnoses and a new taxonomy of disease. He made the distinction clear between precision medicine and personalized medicine claiming that even his father practiced personalized medicine because he knew his patients well.

Cancer deaths are rising globally, especially in less developed countries, according to Varmus. He explained how open exchange of information with cancer centers around the world is important to solving new cancer challenges. He described how cancers are more frequently related to infectious agents in the developing world, like the Epstein-Barr virus’s relationship to Burkett’s lymphoma, and the implications for research.

To fund important but non-obvious questions in cancer research, he has launched the “Provocative Questions” Project. These questions are meant to build on specific advances and address broad issues. Because researchers can be more risk-averse when funding levels are lower, this project hopes to fund intriguing questions that would otherwise remain unfunded and unanswered.

These questions need answers. Who better to answer them than the Duke MD/PhD candidates in the audience.

Molecule traps treasure like a kid with M&Ms

By Ashley Yeager

On April 16, 2012

In Chemistry, Lecture, Visualization

By Ashley Yeager

A new guest molecule knocks out the captive one in a cavitand just before it snaps shut. Credit: Lubomir Sebo.

Kids know when they’re going to get a tasty treat like M&Ms. They hold out their hands, palm up, and the snap their fingers around the chocolaty treats like a venus fly trap around a fly.

About a decade ago, Julius Rebek of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and his collaborators created a molecule that could do the exact same thing, trapping other molecules in much the same way.

Rebek’s goals was to understand how molecules behave when confined to small spaces. To do this, the chemists created a molecule called a cavitand, which self-assembles through bonds of hydrogen atoms into hand-like structures.

During an April 11 chemistry seminar, Rebek described how the walls or “fingers” of a cavitand use strong hydrogen bonds to curl around and snare another molecule. As a result, prying the cavitand open is a lot like trying to take candy from the closed grip of a child. It can be done but it takes energy and a bit of coaxing.

Rebek said that the cavitands’ finger-based hydrogen bonds can rupture. In response, the molecule then acts like a kid who opens his hand to show his M&Ms to a sibling, tempting her to take some. The captive molecule in the cavitand is exposed, and another can come in and knock it out of place, like a sister throwing something into her brother’s hand to knock out M&Ms for herself. Both the hand and the cavitand clasp shut quickly, taking a new type of treasure into their clutches.

By designing cavitands and other self-assembling molecular traps, chemists have begun to explore the way acids bind when trapped, how to control nano-sized spaces and how to switch molecules in and out of these nanospaces. The discoveries, Rebek said, will help scientists understand the binding and movement of molecules and the nanospaces where life’s most fundamental chemical reactions occur.

TEDxDuke 2012

By Becca Bayham

On April 11, 2012

In Behavior/Psychology, Computers/Technology, Lecture, Science Communication & Education, Students

By Becca Bayham

You may have some superhero in you, according to a speaker at TEDxDuke, March 31. Borrowing the format of TED, a popular lecture series, the second-annual event featured 12 mini-lectures spanning subjects from poetry to ballet to historical architecture. Below, I discuss the three speakers that resonated with me the most.

Dasan Ahanu, poet and spoken word performer

Batman might win in a popularity contest, but fellow superhero the Green Lantern has a lot to teach us, according to Dasan Ahanu.

Ahanu described several parallels between artists and the green-garbed superhero. The Green Lantern overcomes his fear and protects the Earth by tapping into an energy source with a magic ring. Artists channel power too, Ahanu said — but with a pen, paintbrush or microphone instead of a fancy ring.

Artists, too, have to overcome fear, but it’s fear of criticism and embarrassment, rather than fear of interstellar criminals (fortunately). Also like the Lantern, artists access a central source of energy — creativity.

“The only limit to their power is imagination,” Ahanu said.

Patty Kennedy, marketing and communications professional

Patty Kennedy opened with a clip from the Matrix, when Morpheus tells Neo to jump from one building to another. Neo tries… and fails.

“Sometimes we jump, and we fall really hard,” Kennedy said. “What we’ll talk about today is why you need to jump anyway.”

Babies fall all the time when they’re learning how to walk, but that doesn’t keep them from trying.

“If we’re born with the willingness to move forward, what happened to us?” she asked. “My theory is that we unlearned courage.”

Courage doesn’t imply the absence of fear, she said. It means overcoming your fear — jumping even though you know you might fall.

“In all respect to this esteemed university, it’s not what made you great — you started that way.”

Jimmy Soni, Duke ’07 and chief of staff at the Huffington Post

History is like castor oil, Jimmy Soni said. It’s good for us, but it tastes bad.

“I might be going out on a limb, but I think we can make history taste better.”

To demonstrate, he told a story. He described how the Eiffel Tower was heavily criticized by Parisians during the years after its construction in 1889 (indeed, it was almost torn down in 1909). One particularly-vocal critic could be seen eating at a cafe under the landmark every day. When questioned about this, he said: “It’s the only place where I can’t see the Eiffel Tower.”

Our cultural past is full of interesting stories, Soni said. Working those stories into the curriculum could make history a lot more appetizing.

Sugar-coated cells not like Peanut M&M's

By sa160@duke.edu

On April 9, 2012

In Biology, Cancer, Lecture

By Nonie Arora

Carolyn Bertozzi. Source: Wikimedia commons

UC Berkeley professor Carolyn Bertozzi spoke about sugar coated cells and peanut M&Ms following the unveiling of the English translation of Hertha Sponer’s biographyon April 5.

Hertha Sponer (1895-1968), a noted scientist who studied quantum mechanics, physics, and chemistry, was the first woman on the Duke Physics faculty. Bertozzi called it a privilege to “celebrate the life, career, and legacy of Hertha Sponer.”

Bertozzi discussed how scientists used to think of sugars on the surfaces of cells like the candy coating on peanut M&Ms – only there to serve as a protective barrier. Now, she says people appreciate the diverse information stored in the sugars as an important diagnostic tool.

These cell surface sugars, called glycans, can give us information about a cell state. In fact, human blood groups are determined by cell surface glycans. The glycans specific to each blood group are not much different chemically, but according to Dr. Bertozzi, “the human immune system is exquisitely specific to recognize functional groups. If someone who is blood type A is given type B blood, they will have a massive reaction.”

Tamiflu Source: Wikimedia Commons

Glycans are relevant to many different areas of medicine, from stem cell biology to viral infection. Drugs for influenza viruses were developed by taking advantage of glycan chemistry. Bertozzi explained that in the pharmaceutical industry, better understandings of binding to cell-surface sugars enabled creation of Relenza and Tamiflu.

Bertozzi also described how X-ray crystallography was used to understand the binding of the enzyme and sugars and that Hertha Sponer made valuable contributions to that field.

Cell surface sugars also differ between healthy and diseased cells. Cancer cells have a different profile of cell surface sugars than normal cells. For example, polysialic acid (PSA) which is usually only in neurons in brains, pops up frequently on tumor cells. According to Bertozzi, detecting the levels of the acid would allow scientists to see tumors without invasive surgery. Bertozzi’s lab has been working on several projects to develop this method for tumor and cancer imaging.

Improve science to explain everything, Dawkins says

By Becca Bayham

On April 3, 2012

In Animals, Behavior/Psychology, Biology, Lecture, Science Communication & Education, Students

By Becca Bayham

Have you ever wondered what people in the Middle Ages would have thought about airplanes? Or automatic doors? What would we have thought about iPhones 10 years ago?

Advanced technology can seem like magic, scientist Richard Dawkins said at a public lecture on March 29. But as cool as these technologies are, we know there’s nothing mystical about them.

Dawkins made the case that science, too, can seem magical or divinely-inspired. Take human evolution; some people believe that God, instead of natural selection, is responsible for the incredible complexity of life on Earth.

In response to that idea, Dawkins described a card game where a straight flush in any suit gives you a perfect hand. The odds of all four players getting a perfect hand are infinitesimally small, almost impossible. (If that happened to you, you might consider divine influence.)

“Evolution is not like that, but a lot of people think it is,” Dawkins said.

“Changes come about through the process of natural selection, which is often thought to be random chance, even though it is the opposite of random chance. It works because every one of those steps is only slightly improbable. But after 1,000 steps, you can end up with something beautiful, looking improbably like it was designed,” he explained.

Given a sufficiently large number of generations, very significant changes can occur. But evolution doesn’t guarantee change, Dawkins said. Chimpanzees, for example, have had as much time to evolve as we have. And yet they resemble our African ape ancestor more closely than we do.

When Christian academic John Lennox spoke at Duke earlier this year, he argued that science and religion are not mutually exclusive. Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, falls on the other end of the faith vs. science spectrum. He said he doesn’t believe in religion, instead advocating an evidence-based approach to life.

“There are lots of people who actually do believe that a first century prophet turned water into wine, walked on water and fed the 5,000. There’s no more reason to believe that than to believe Cinderella’s fairy godmother turned a pumpkin into a carriage,” Dawkins said.

If something happens that science can’t explain, he argued that we should keep improving our science until we can explain it.

“Don’t ever be lazy enough to say ‘I can’t explain it, so it must be a miracle,'” Dawkins said. “The proper and brave response to any such challenge it to tackle it head on.”

Informed or uninformed consent?

By Ashley Mooney

On March 29, 2012

In Global Health, Lecture, Medicine

By Ashley Mooney

Patients giving consent for medical research often do not know what they are getting into, said Christine Grady, chief of the department of bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center.

In a March 28 lecture entitled “Ethics in Global Health Research: New Data on Enhancing Informed Consent,” Grady presented the results of her quantitative study on informed consent in the developed and developing countries. As low as 10 percent of patients understood the studies they were participating in, she said, adding that patients in the first and third worlds showed no statistical difference in understanding.

Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Dennis Gamad from Leaitle, Wash., questions a patient who is waiting to see a doctor from the 31st Expeditionary Unit (31st MEU). U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate 1st Class Winston C. Pitman, via Wikimedia Commons.

Using results of 49 studies of the quality of consent—31 in developing countries and 18 in developing countries, Grady compared the quality of informed consent based on patient understanding and voluntariness.

“Informed consent is an ethical, a legal and a regulatory requirement in most healthcare and research with human subjects, but it’s not the only thing that makes research ethical,” Grady said. “There should be a lot of attention to the purpose of doing it, the value of doing it, how the studies are constructed [and] what the risks and benefits are.”

She noted that literacy rates, lack of familiarity with research, cultural-specific patterns of decision making and socioeconomic factors did not prevent informed and independent consent.

“Written documents are increasingly becoming longer and more legalistic, making it impossible for people to understand what they’re getting into,” she said.

Several patients did not understand the use of placebos in research trials, or that they might be randomly selected as members of a control group and not actually receive the treatment.

To improve informed consent, Grady noted that researchers can use tests and feedback, multimedia, enhanced consent forms and extended discussion with a research team member or neutral educator. These methods, however, are based on Western models that do not work in developing countries, she said.

“Informed consent can be improved everywhere. There’s no logical reason to insist that informed consent be identical in countries with different cultures,” Grady said. “We need to be creative in terms of our methods of giving people information, asking them about their understanding [and] enhancing their ability to make decisions.”

CITATION: “The quality of informed consent: mapping the landscape. A review of empirical data from developing and developed countries,” Amulya Mandava, Christine Pace, Benjamin Campbell, Ezekiel Emanuel, Christine Grady. Journal of Medical Ethics, online Feb. 7, 2012. DOI: 10.1136/medethics-2011-100178. Full text.

9/11: A public health failure

By Ashley Mooney

On March 29, 2012

In Global Health, Lecture

By Ashley Mooney

In the wake of 9/11, the United States suffered a massive public health cover-up, Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for the global health on the Council on Foreign Relations recently told a Duke audience.

Garrett spoke on the public health devastation caused by the attacks on 9/11 and the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic. As only person to win the three “P”s of journalism—the Pulitzer, the Polk and the Peabody— she served as the keynote presenter on March 26 for Duke’s student-led Global Health Week.

Ground Zero on September 13, 2001 by Andrea Booher (FEMA), via Wikimedia Commons.

During her presentation, Garrett showed her photo-essay of September 11, 2001, flashing images of the debris and smog emanating from Ground Zero.

“The plume [of smoke from the Twin Towers’ collapse] swept over—it invaded your lungs, it invaded your soul. We knew that it was toxic but we were told otherwise,” she said. “For four months the debris cleared and for four months we had a chemical soup in New York City…. We now know that a massive cover-up and a true public health catastrophe occurred.”

She noted that although government and public health officials reassured those who were in New York at the time that they were at little risk, chrysotile asbestos and potent carcinogens saturated the air.

“We had all this exposure to a kind of salt that the human body is unable to clear,” she said. “It was akin to throwing lye or Drano down your throat.”

Only the bombing of Dresden produced a comparable amount of exposure to human beings, she said.

Despite data suggesting staggering negative health consequences from exposure to the smoke cloud of 9/11, Garrett said the White House’s primary concern was on the threat of Anthrax infection.

She said the anthrax threats and infections were a form of asymmetric warfare—where one side spends very few resources and has a huge impact on the other side. While those responsible for the biological attacks spent an estimated $200,000, the United States spent millions in chemical forensics and tracking down “phony” tips.

Laurie Garrett speaking at Poptech 2008 by Kris Krug, via Wikimedia Commons.

Although 9/11 devastated the country, Garrett noted that it caused a spike in attention and funding for global health initiatives. This funding, however, was “fast, urgent and sloppy.”

Countries receiving aid had never dealt with such large sums of money before, she said.

She detailed several problems that contribute to this failure, including budgetary problems and political priorities that do not match public-health interests.

The “single greatest failure in global health,” has been the response to AIDS, she said. In June 2011, there were 1.8 million AIDS-related deaths, a decrease from the 2.1 million deaths in 2004. However, an estimated 65-75 million people acquired HIV in 2011, she said.

“I don’t think we win this war by creating one stream of success,” she said. “It requires sustained activism—the momentum slides off—and that is the crisis we’re in right now.”

The Duke Partnership for Service, Duke Global Health Institute, DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy and the Sanford School of Public Policy sponsored the event.

Finding the People Who Know Things

By Becca Bayham

On March 29, 2012

In Business/Economics, Lecture

By Becca Bayham

“The first thing people did besides eat and reproduce was tell stories,” reporter Charles Fishman said during a lunch with Duke students and visiting Media Fellow journalists, March 19.

As a writer for the business magazine Fast Company, Fishman tells stories for a living.

“I am not a conventional investigative reporter,” he said. “I’m trying to find out how the world really works … If I find out things that are exciting and fun, then I can tell a good story.”

Fishman got his start at the Washington Post, later working at the Orlando Sentinel and Raleigh’s own News & Observer. He said that his years at the Post were a formative experience.

“It’s really important to write about a community that you then have to be a part of everyday,” Fishman said. “These people read my stories, and then I saw them. That inevitably changed both our behaviors … It kept me honest, and they knew that whatever they did would be in the Washington Post.”

Fishman described the process behind some of his major stories, including a 2003 article about Wal-Mart. Assigned to write about the massive multinational retailer, Fishman found that Wal-Mart wields an inordinate amount of influence over its suppliers. Proctor & Gamble, for example, employs 300 people merely to manage its business with Wal-Mart. Most suppliers have at least one representative located near in Wal-Mart’s Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters.

Fishman wanted to learn more. However, he realized that no company representative would want to speak with him, when candidness could cost them their jobs.

“There was more reason for someone in the C.I.A. to talk to me than one of these people,” Fishman said.

A friend gave him access to a listserv of marketing professionals; he used it to reach out to people who had previously worked for supplier companies. He discovered a network of people who were willing to talk, because their jobs weren’t on line. Fishman eventually wrote a whole book about Wal-Mart.

The moral of the story? In today’s world, it is increasingly possible to find people that know the answer to your question.

Fishman also advised the group of assembled students and journalists to keep real people in the picture.

“Those voices and those emotions bring your storytelling to life,” he said. “You need to make the phone call. Don’t be a press release service.”