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Category: Lecture Page 3 of 20

How Concerned Should You Be About AirTags?

Photograph of an AirTag from Wikimedia Commons. Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International. Creator: KKPCW.

I didn’t even know what an AirTag was until I attended a cybersecurity talk by Nick Tripp, senior manager of Duke’s IT Security Office, but according to Tripp, AirTag technology is “something that the entire Duke community probably needs to be aware of.”

An AirTag is a small tracking device that can connect to any nearby Apple device using Bluetooth. AirTags were released by Apple in April 2021 and are designed to help users keep track of items like keys and luggage. Tripp himself has one attached to his keys. If he loses them, he can open the “Find My” app on his phone (installed by default on Apple devices), and if anyone else with an Apple device has been near his keys since he lost them, the Bluetooth technology will let him see where his keys were when the Apple device user passed them—or took them.

According to Tripp, AirTags have two distinct advantages over earlier tracking devices. First, they use technology that lets the “Find My” app provide “precise location tracking”—within an inch of the AirTag’s location. Second, because AirTags use the existing Apple network, “every iPhone and iPad in the world becomes a listening device.”

You can probably guess where this is going. Unfortunately, the very features that make AirTags so useful for finding lost or stolen items also make them susceptible to abuse. There are numerous reports of AirTags being used to stalk people. Tripp has seen that problem on Duke’s campus, too. He gives the example of someone going to a bar and later finding an AirTag in their bag or jacket without knowing who put it there. The IT Security Office at Duke sees about 2-3 suspected cyberstalking incidents per month, with 1-2 confirmed each year. Cyberstalking, Tripp emphasizes, isn’t confined to the internet. It “straddles the internet and the real world.” Not all of the cyberstalking reports Duke deals with involve tracking devices, but “the availability of low-cost tracking technology” is a concern. In the wrong hands, AirTags can enable dangerous stalking behavior.

As part of his IT security work, and with his wife’s permission, Tripp dropped an AirTag into his wife’s bag to better understand the potential for nefarious use of AirTags by attackers. Concerningly, he found that he was able to track her movement using the app on his phone—not constantly, but about every five minutes, and if a criminal is trying to stalk someone, knowing their location every five minutes is more than enough.

Fortunately, Apple has created certain safety features to help prevent the malicious use of AirTags. For instance, if someone has been near the same AirTag for several hours (such as Tripp’s wife while there was an AirTag in her bag), they’ll get a pop-up notification on their phone after a random period of time between eight and twenty-four hours warning them that “Your current location can be seen by the owner of this AirTag.” Also, an AirTag will start making a particular sound if it has been away from its owner for eight to twenty-four hours. (It will emit a different sound if the owner of the AirTag is nearby and actively trying to find their lost item using their app.) Finally, each AirTag broadcasts a certain Bluetooth signal, a “public key,” associated with the AirTag’s “private key.” To help thwart potential hackers, that public key changes every eight to twenty-four hours. (Are you wondering yet what’s special about the eight-to-twenty-four hour time period? Tripp says it’s meant to be “frequently enough that Apple can give some privacy to the owner of that AirTag” but “infrequently enough that they can establish a pattern of malicious activity.”)

But despite these safety features, a highly motivated criminal could get around them. Tripp and his team built a “DIY Stealth AirTag” in an attempt to anticipate what measures criminals might take to deactivate or counteract Apple’s built-in security features. (Except when he’s presenting to other IT professionals, Tripp makes a point of not revealing the exact process his team used to make their Stealth AirTag. He wants to inform the public about the potential dangers of tracking technology while avoiding giving would-be criminals any ideas.) Tripp’s wife again volunteered to be tracked, this time with a DIY Stealth AirTag that Tripp placed in her car. He found that the modified AirTag effectively and silently tracked his wife’s car. Unlike the original AirTag, their stealthy version could create a map of everywhere his wife had driven, complete with red markers showing the date, time, and coordinates of each location. An AirTag that has been modified by a skilled hacker could let attackers see “not just where a potential victim is going but when they go there and how often.”

“The AirTag cat is out of the bag, so to speak,” Tripp says. He believes Apple should update their AirTag design to make the safety features harder to circumvent. Nonetheless, “it is far more likely that someone will experience abuse of a retail AirTag” than one modified by a hacker to be stealthier. So how can you protect yourself? Tripp has several suggestions.

  1. Know the AirTag beep indicating that an AirTag without its owner is nearby, potentially in your belongings.
  2. If you have an iPhone, watch for AirTag alerts. If you receive a notification warning you about a nearby AirTag, don’t ignore it.
  3. If you have an Android, Tripp recommends installing the “Tracker Detect” app from Apple because unlike iPhone users, Android users don’t get automatic pop-up notifications if an AirTag has been near them for several hours. The “Tracker Detect” Android app isn’t a perfect solution—you still won’t get automatic notifications; you’ll have to manually open the app to check for nearby trackers. But Tripp still considers it worthwhile.
  4. For iPhone users, make sure you have tracking notifications configured in the “Find My” app. You can go into the app and click “Me,” then “Customize Tracking Notifications.” Make sure the app has permission to send you notifications.
  5. Know how to identify an AirTag if you find one. If you find an AirTag that isn’t yours, and you have an iPhone, go into the “Find My” app, click “Items,” and then swipe up until you see the “Identify Found Item” option. That tool lets you scan the AirTag by holding it near your phone. It will then show the AirTag’s serial number and the last four digits of the owner’s phone number, which can be useful for the police. “If I found one,” Tripp says, “I think it’s worth making a police report.”

It’s worth noting that owning an AirTag does not put you at higher risk of stalking or other malicious behavior. The concern, whether or not you personally use AirTags, is that attackers can buy AirTags themselves and use them maliciously. Choosing to use AirTags to keep track of important items, meanwhile, won’t hurt you and may be worth considering, especially if you travel often or are prone to misplacing things. Not all news about AirTags is bad. They’ve helped people recover lost items, from luggage and wallets to photography gear and an electric scooter.

“I actually think this technology is extremely useful,” Tripp says. It’s the potential for abuse by attackers that’s the problem.

Post by Sophie Cox, Class of 2025

Anyone Can Be a “Math Person”

Dr. Francis Su, a mathematician and professor at Harvey Mudd College and the author of “Mathematics for Human Flourishing,” wants you to know that math can be beautiful. As these “infinitely quartered” squares show, 1/4 + 1/(42) + 1/(43) + … = 1/3. Image attribution: Tdadamemd, via Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

Francis Su, Ph.D., visited Duke to talk about math. He began by talking about art.

Su, a mathematician and professor at Harvey Mudd College, displayed “Hope,” an 1886 painting by George Frederic Watts. He asked the audience to look at it, really look at it, and think about what’s happening in the painting. At first glance, it shows a blindfolded woman holding a wooden object. She seems to be in pain. But the more time we spend looking, the more we notice. We might notice that there’s a single star above her. We might notice that the wooden object is a lyre with only one string left attached. We might notice, too, that the woman is plucking that final string and straining to hear its music. 

If we take the time to explore the history of the painting, we might learn that Martin Luther King, Jr., talked about the same painting in a sermon. Su quoted a line from that sermon: “Who has not had to face the agony of blasted hopes and shattered dreams?” We find beauty in art, and often we find it relatable as well. Art invites us to look closer, to wonder, to feel, to ask questions, to imagine.

“Why,” Su asks then, “don’t we approach mathematics the way that we approach art?”

Professor Francis Su’s book, “Mathematics for Human Flourishing.”

Whether we consider ourselves “math people” or not, we rarely if ever hear mathematics discussed as an affirmation of human virtues and desires—love, beauty, truth, the “expectation of enchantment.” Su wants to change that. In his book “Mathematics for Human Flourishing” and in his talk at Duke, he envisions mathematics as beautiful, inclusive, and accessible to anyone.

Along with the painting “Hope,” Su’s first slide shows a quote by Simone Weil: “Every being cries out silently to be read differently.” Simone Weil, according to Su, was a “French religious mystic” and “widely revered philosopher,” but she also had a deep interest in math. Her older brother, André Weil, was an influential mathematician whose mathematical achievements often overshadowed her own. In a letter to a friend published posthumously in the book “Waiting for God,” Simone Weil wrote: “I did not mind having no visible successes, but what did grieve me was the idea of being excluded from that transcendent kingdom to which only the truly great have access and wherein truth abides.” Su sometimes wonders how Simone’s relationship to mathematics would have been different if André had not been her brother. Again, “Every being cries out silently to be read differently.” According to Su, when Simone Weil speaks of “reading” someone, she means “to interpret or make a judgment about them.”

Su has a friend, Christopher Jackson, who is an inmate in a high-security prison, serving a thirty-two year sentence for involvement in armed robberies as a teenager. When you think about people who do math, Su asks, would you think of Chris?  “We create societal norms about who does math,” and Chris doesn’t fit those norms. And yet he has been studying mathematics for years. After studying algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus while in prison, he sent a letter to Su requesting help in furthering his mathematics education. The two men still correspond regularly, and Chris is now studying topology and other branches of mathematics.

“Every being cries out silently to be read differently.”

Why do math in the first place? Just as you can take your car to a mechanic without fully understanding how it works yourself, we might think of math as “only for the elite few” or perhaps as “a means to an end,” a tool “to make you ‘college and career ready.’” Su sees it differently. He views math in terms of human flourishing, “a wholeness of being and doing.” He points to three words from other languages: eudaemonia, a Greek term for “the overarching good in life”; shalom, a Hebrew word often used as a greeting and roughly translated as “peace”; and salaam, an Arabic word with a similar meaning to shalom.

The pattern on Romanesco broccoli is a fractal, common in both math and nature. Image credit: Francis Su

“What attracts me to music,” Su says, “isn’t playing scales over and over again.” But once you “experience a symphony,” you might see the value in playing scales. Can we learn to think of math the same way? Here, Su quoted mathematician Olga Taussky-Todd: “The yearning for and the satisfaction gained from mathematical insight brings the subject near to art.”

Beauty and awe probably aren’t the first words that come to mind when most of us think of math, but Su believes math can unlock “transcendent beauty.” He references a quote by C.S. Lewis: “the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” That is what math at its best can do for us. It can help us see the big picture and realize that we’re “just scratching the surface of something really profound.”

“Math is not a single ‘ability,’” Su says. “In reality, math is a multi-dimensional set of virtues.” When learning or teaching math, we often focus more on skills like recalling facts and algorithms, factoring polynomials, or taking a derivative. But Su believes more important lessons are at play: virtues like persistence, creativity, a thirst for deep knowledge, and what he calls the expectation of enchantment. And, he says, employers are often much more interested in virtues than in skills. “If you want to be really practical about this—and I don’t, with mathematics, but if you do—then it’s actually the virtues that are more important than the skills,” Su says.

One basic human desire that Su believes math can help fulfill is the desire for truth, which, in turn, can help build virtues like a thirst for deep knowledge and the ability to think for oneself, which can help us figure out what’s true instead of just blindly trusting authorities. “Truth is under attack,” Su says. “Misinformation is everywhere.” Su wants to teach his students “to think, to be ‘that person who doesn’t need to look at the Ikea instructions.’” But he also wants them to view math as more than just a means to an end. “It’s my responsibility to help my students remember the beauty” in math and to understand that their dignity as human beings isn’t dependent on their grades.

Along with truth and beauty, he believes math can and should bring opportunities for exploration and discovery. “My role isn’t to be a teacher,” he says. “My role is to be a co-explorer.” He recalls his own excitement when he first saw a Menger cube, or Menger sponge, cut along its diagonal. The resulting cross-section is beautiful and, yes, enchanting. “What would it look like for classrooms to be like that?” During the pandemic, Su started adding more reflection-focused questions to his exams, questions like “Consider one mathematical idea from the course that you have found beautiful, and explain why it is beautiful to you.” Even more traditional math questions can be phrased in an “exploratory” way. Su gives the example of a question that asks students to make two rectangles, one with a bigger perimeter and one with a bigger area.

A visual representation of Nicomachus’s Theorem.
Image from Cmglee, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.

Another desire or virtue important in the field of mathematics is justice. Su wants math to be accessible to all, but not everyone has had positive experiences with math or feels like they belong there. As an analogy, Su talks about receiving dishes from a “secret menu” when visiting certain Chinese restaurants with friends who are fluent in Chinese. When he goes there on his own and requests the “secret menu,” however, he is sometimes turned away or told that he wouldn’t like those dishes. “Are people side-by-side in the same restaurant having different experiences” in math, too? “Who are you to say they do or don’t belong in mathematics?”

Even Su himself hasn’t always had wholly positive experiences in math. One of his professors once told him he didn’t “have what it takes to become a successful mathematician,” and he almost quit his Ph.D. program. Instead, he switched to a different advisor who had encouraged him to stick with it. Meanwhile, he surrounded himself with people who could remind him why he loved math. Math as a field can be competitive, but “if you think of mathematics as human flourishing… then that’s not a zero-sum game anymore.” 

In Su’s words, “we’re all math teachers” because “we all pass on attitudes about math to others.” He says studies show that parents can pass on “math anxiety” to their kids. But Su encourages people to “believe that you and everyone can flourish in mathematics.” Simone Weil. Christopher Jackson. And you. 

Who will you read differently?

Post by Sophie Cox, Class of 2025

COVID and Our Education

With mask mandates being overturned and numerous places going back to “normal,” COVID is becoming more of a subconscious thought. Now, this is not a true statement for the entire population, since there are people who are looking at the effects of the pandemic and the virus itself.

I attended a poster presentation for the “The Pandemic Divide” event hosted here at Duke by the Samuel Dubois Cook Center on Social Equity. To me, all the poster boards conveyed the theme of how COVID-19 had affected our lives in more ways than just our health. One connection that particularly caught my eye would be the one between American Education and COVID.

The poster for the conference

As a student who lived through COVID while attending high school, I can safely say that the pandemic has affected education. However, based on the posters I saw, it is important to know that education, too, has a strong and impactful impact on COVID-19.

Dr. Donald J. Alcendor after a great presentation

The first evidence I saw was from Donald J. Alcendor, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Meharry Medical College in Nashville. His poster was about the hesitancy surrounding COVID-19 vaccines. One way he and his team figured out to lessen the hesitance from the public was to improve the public’s trust. To achieve this, Alcendor and his team sent trusted messengers into the community. One of the types of messengers they provided was scientists who studied COVID-19. These scientists were able to bring factual information about the disease, how it spreads, and the best course of action to act against it. Alcendor and his research team also brought in “vaccine ambassadors” to the community and a mobile unit to help give the community vaccines. He noted that this was accomplished with support from the Bloomberg Foundation’s Greenwood Initiative, which addresses Black health issues.

With this mobile unit, Alcendor and his team were able to reach people and help those who were otherwise unable to receive help for themselves because of their lack of transportation. They provided people from all backgrounds with help and valuable information.

Alcindor said he and his team planned pop-up events based on where the community they were trying to reach congregates. With the African American community, he planned pop-up events at churches and schools. Then for the Latino community, he planned pop-events where families tend to gather, and he held events in Latin0 neighborhoods. In addition, he made sure that the information was available in Spanish at all levels, from the flyers and the surveys, to the vaccinators themselves.

All of these amenities that he and his group provided were able to educate the community about COVID-19 and improve their trust in the scientists working on the disease. Alcendor and his team were able to impact COVID-19 through education, and by going to the event, it was evident to me that he was not the only one who accomplished this.

Dr. Colin Cannonier and his poster

Colin Cannonier, an associate professor of economics at Belmont University in Nashville, asked and answered the question, “does education have an impact on COVID? Specifically, does it change health and wellbeing?” To answer this question, he researched how education about COVID can affect a person. He discovered that when a person is more educated about COVID, how it is spread, and its symptoms, they are more likely to keep the pandemic in check through their behavior. He came to this conclusion because he realized that when higher educated people know more about COVID, they exhibit behaviors to remain healthy, meaning that they would follow the health protocols given by the health officials.

While this may seem like common sense that the more educated a person is, the more they make smart choices pertaining to COVID, this shows how important education is and how deadly ignorance is. Cannonier’s research gave tangible evidence to show that education is a weapon against diseases. Unfortunately, it is evident that some officials did not believe in educating the public about the virus or the virus itself, and that proved to be extremely deadly.

To fully capture the relationship between COVID and education, one must also talk about how COVID-19 affected education.

Ms. Stacey Akines and her wonderful poster

Stacey Akines, a history graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, studied how education was changed by the pandemic.

First, she realized that COVID schooling crossed over with homeschooling. Then she uncovered that more Black people started to research and teach their children about Black history. This desire to teach youth more about their history caused an increase in the number of Black homeschoolers. In fact, the number of Black homeschoolers doubled during the fall of 2020. While to some, this change to homeschooling may have a negative impact on one’s life, it actually gives the student more opportunities to learn things.

It is no secret that there are many books being banned here in the U.S., and there are many state curriculums that are changing to erase much of Black history. Homeschooling a child gives the parent an opportunity to ensure that the education they receive is true to and tells their history

Unlike me, where during high school, education felt lackluster and limited because of COVID, some parents saw an opportunity to better their child’s education.

A hall of Posters

I hope that it is clear that the relationship between COVID and education is a complex one. Both can greatly impact each other, whether it’s for the better or for the worse. COVID thrives when we are uneducated, and it very nearly destroyed education too, but for the efforts of some dedicated educators.

Post by Jakaiyah Franklin, Class of 2025

Why Do Some Dogs Need High Chairs, and How Can Genetics Help?

Jake, a German shepherd dog in a Bailey chair. Dogs with megaesophagus must eat in a vertical position to help food travel to their stomachs.
Photo credit: Beth Grant

Some dogs have to eat in a high chair—or, more specifically, a Bailey Chair. The chair keeps them in a vertical position while they eat so that gravity can do the work their bodies can’t: moving food from the mouth to the stomach.

These dogs have megaesophagus, an esophagus disorder that can prevent dogs from properly digesting food and absorbing nutrients. When you swallow a bite of food, it travels down a muscular tube, the esophagus, to the stomach. In humans, the esophagus is vertical, so our esophageal muscles don’t have to fight against gravity. But because dogs are quadrupeds, a dog’s esophagus is more horizontal, so “there is a greater burden on peristaltic contractions to transport the food into the stomach.” In dogs with megaesophagus, the esophagus is dilated, and those contractions are less effective. Instead of moving properly into the stomach, food can remain in the esophagus, exacerbating the problem and preventing proper digestion and nutrient absorption. 

Leigh Anne Clark, Ph.D., an associate professor at Clemson University, recently spoke at Duke about megaesophagus in dogs and its genetic underpinnings. She has authored dozens of publications on dog genetics, including five cover features. Her research primarily involves “[mapping] alleles and genes that underlie disease in dogs.” In complex diseases like megaesophagus, that’s easier said than done. “This disease has a spectrum,” Clark says, and “Spoiler: that makes it more complicated to map.”

Clinical signs of megaesophagus, or mega for short, include regurgitation, coughing, loss of appetite, and weight loss. (We might use the word “symptom” to talk about human conditions, but “a symptom is something someone describes—e.g., I feel nauseous. But dogs can’t talk, so we can only see ‘clinical signs.’”) Complications of mega can include aspiration pneumonia and, in severe cases, gastroesophageal intussusception, an emergency situation in which dogs “suck their stomach up into their esophagus.”

Leigh Anne Clark of Clemson University

Sometimes megaesophagus resolves on its own with age, but when it doesn’t it requires lifelong management. Mega has no cure, but management can involve vertical feeding, smaller and more frequent meals, soft foods, and sometimes medication. Even liquid water can cause problems, so some dogs with mega receive “cubed water,” made by adding a “gelatinous material” to water, instead of a normal water bowl.

In dogs, mega can be either congenital, meaning present at birth, or acquired. In cases of acquired megaesophagus, the condition is “usually secondary to something else,” and the root cause is often never determined. (Humans can get mega, too, but as with acquired mega in dogs, mega in humans is usually caused by a preexisting condition. The best human comparison, according to Clark, might be achalasia, a rare disorder that causes difficulty swallowing.) Clark’s current research focuses on the congenital form of the disease in dogs.

Her laboratory recently published a paper investigating the genetic foundation of mega. Unlike some diseases, mega isn’t caused by just one genetic mutation, so determining what genes might be at play required some genetic detective work. “You see mega across breeds,” Clark says, which suggests an environmental component, but the disease is more prevalent in some breeds than others. For instance, 28 percent of all diagnoses are in German shepherds. That was a “red flag” indicating that genes were at least partly responsible.

Clark and her collaborators chose to limit their research study to German shepherds. Despite including a wide range of dogs in the study, they noticed that males were significantly overrepresented. Clark thinks that estrogen, a hormone more abundant in females, may have a protective effect against mega.

Clark and her team performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to look for alleles that are more common in dogs with mega. One allele that turned out to be a major risk factor was a variant of the MCHR2 gene, which plays a role in feeding behaviors. In breeds where mega is overrepresented, like German shepherds, “we have a situation where the predominant allele in the population is also the risk allele,” says Clark.

Using the results of the study, they developed a test that can identify which version of the gene a given dog has. The test, available at veterinary testing companies, is designed “to help breeders reduce the frequency of the risk allele and to plan matings that are less likely to produce affected puppies.”

Post by Sophie Cox, Class of 2025

American Epidemics and the Viral Underclass

March 2020. The subsequent blur of months. Of spring into summer, fall into winter, a year into another and likely into the next. Like millions of humans around the world, 2020 itself feels infected, as if wrapped up with yellow caution tape. Virus dominates the current zeitgeist; pandemic won Merriam-Webster’s 2020 word of the year; vaccine in 2021.

We are all proto-virologists, sludging through the constant slew of “viral” media: novel variants, outbreaks, booster shots, mutations (a jargon in which we’re collectively fluent). 

In the somewhat-receding wake of COVID-19, like floodwater, viral fear recently surged again when the World Health Organization began reporting monkeypox (MPX) outbreaks in Europe and North America. The stigmatization of MPX patients as “disease-spreaders” (in the media, on the internet, in conversation, etc.) suggests these individuals have a kind of authority over the virulent strands of DNA in their bodies. This belief aligns with the etymology of “virus” from the Latin “poison,” a word that functions as both noun and verb. Passive and active. Culpable.

Alan Krumeweide in Contagion (Claudette Barius / Warner Bros.)

I’m reminded of Jude Law’s fear-mongering character in Contagion, Alan Krumewiede, the conspiracy theorist who conjectured MEV-1, the film’s fictional virus, was “Godzilla, King Kong, Frankenstein, all in one.” 

Of course, this sentiment did not bud from MPX or COVID-19 like a novel variant. No, it has existed in the United States for decades, if not longer, and it has not been dormant.

Dr. Stephen Thrasher, a scholar of the criminalization of HIV/AIDS at Northwestern University, stood in Duke’s anthropology lecture hall this month and drew parallels between the recent MPX/COVID-19 epidemics and that of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s-90s and stretching into the new millennium. He asked us to raise our hands if we personally knew someone with HIV/AIDS. A few did. If we knew someone who had died from HIV-related causes. A few less. What about COVID? The entire audience raised hands as if to signal the new era of viral infection.

Dr. Steven Thrasher is the inaugural Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting (with an emphasis on issues relevant to the LGBTQ community) and an assistant professor of journalism at Northwestern. His research focuses on HIV in America.

Since the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in 1981, more than 700,000 people have died from HIV-related illness in the United States, a disproportionate number of whom were men who had sex with men and injection drug users (with poverty exacerbating the likelihood of acquisition).

As Thrasher historicized, the stigma that encapsulated HIV/AIDS significantly delayed life-saving interventions on the local and national scale. Prejudice hindered research funding, drug distribution, and government health agency mobilization. The rising tide of the HIV/AIDS epidemic was concurrent with increased violence towards the LGBTQ community, and gay men in particular, analogous to a king tide flooding the coastline.

Thrasher exemplified this taboo through the “patient zero” misconception, which was propagated by the media during the epidemic and embedded like a splinter in pop culture’s thumb (i.e. the film Patient Zero with Matt Smith, Stanley Tucci, and Natalie Dormer). 

Gaëtan Dugas was miscredited as Patient Zero of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in America 
Credit: Fadoo Productions

Gaëtan Dugas, a Québécois Canadian flight attendant, was inappropriately labeled “patient zero” of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in America. As Thrasher and other researchers have debunked, Dugas was, in fact, not the first person to bring HIV to the United States. Further, Dugas was not even included in the early infection group. And Dugas was Patient O (like oh), not zero, for Out-of-State. Yet, this contextualization of the virus endures despite being disproved. Upon diagnosis, many infected individuals will experience shame.

In the 1980s and 90s, HIV/AIDS was characterized as the “gay plague,” setting ablaze a moral panic in America comparable to that of the Satanic Panic, rock ‘n’ roll, and fear of razor blades stuffed into gooey 3 Musketeers bars at Halloween (and there’s an interesting overlap in the timing of these hysterias in the collective American consciousness). And just two months ago even, many people were characterizing MPX in the same accusatory and morally dubious way. 

Like with the AIDS epidemic, Thrasher said the US government failed to mobilize public health initiatives early enough to proactively stifle MPX outbreaks in spite of the disease’s well-documented diffusion across Europe and into neighboring Canada.

“We could’ve tapped the Strategic National Stockpile,” he argued. Thrasher listed multiple public health interventions that could have and should have been implemented with the first faint smoke signals of MPX in the United States (as they were in the past for meningitis and polio outbreaks). 

For context, the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) is a cache of medicines, antibiotics, and vaccines that the government started to accumulate just prior to 9/11 in 2001 and, seemingly, in an exponential manner after — almost like doomsday preppers hoarding freeze-dried beef stroganoff and cans of beans in their underground bunkers. Born from the smoking rubble and smoke of New York City following the terrorist attack, fear of biological warfare, especially the weaponization of smallpox, paralyzed the US (i.e. the Anthrax scare).

The SNS was tapped after 9/11, for 12 major hurricanes, COVID-19, and the swine flu (to name a few), but not for monkeypox.

As historically evidenced, mass vaccination and herd immunity effectively prevent the spread of viral infections, especially for slow-mutating viruses like MPX.

“We should have quickly vaccinated queer men and transmasc people,” Thrasher said, “building on a very historic anomaly which is that adults have been socialized to take vaccines en masse in a way that has not happened in many decades.” And because MPX and smallpox are closely related viruses, a rollout of the stockpile’s smallpox vaccine could have nipped the outbreak in the bud. 

But, the SNS was not tapped. 100 million doses remain stockpiled. There are nearly 28,000 total monkeypox cases documented in the United States.

A large focus of Thrasher’s research is on who is affected by viruses, and how, and why. Nearing 6.6 million COVID-19 deaths worldwide, many would argue that viruses — these ancient, non-life forms — are Earth’s “great equalizers,” as acknowledged by Thrasher in multiple publications. Evolution has pushed them to infect, replicate, and spread: machine-like and non-discriminatory.

But, he added, viruses are not great equalizers. Infection is inherently unequal. Again, we must ask the question who?

Thrasher’s book The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide was recently long-listed for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in nonfiction

Viral infections disproportionately burden marginalized bodies and communities, a concept Thrasher framed as the viral underclass (coined by activist Sean Strub and reshaped by Thrasher to describe this phenomenon)Writing in his book of the same name, “… the viral underclass can help us think about how and why marginalized populations are subjected to increased harms of viral transmission, exposure, replication, and death.”  

Let’s return to the MPX vaccine. The Biden administration did not tap the SNS for mass vaccination. Instead, it rolled out meager health interventions at a snail’s pace (like Sisyphus pushing his stone up the hill). Still, many at-risk individuals, in particular men who have sex with men, opted to receive a two-shot regimen to protect themselves from the virus. Considering the viral underclass, Thrasher posed the following questions: 

Who is disproportionately burdened by MPX in the US? He answered, “Black and Latino men who have sex with men.” 

And, who is receiving the medical interventions to protect themselves from the painful infection? He answered again, “I got one MPX vaccine shot, almost everyone in line but me and a friend were white.” He describes the discrepancy between those receiving the vaccine and those most at-risk of acquiring MPX in his Scientific American article “Monkeypox Is a Sexually Transmitted Infection, and Knowing That Can Help Protect People.”

And his years of HIV research corroborate this trend.

From the New York Times, Michael Johnson has been working to overturn laws criminalizing HIV in the United States.

He spoke (and wrote in The Viral Underclass) about his time reporting the Michael Johnson court case in St. Louis, Missouri. Michael Johnson, a black, gay, former college wrestler, was sentenced to 30 years in prison after failing to disclose his HIV status to his sexual partners — a criminal offense. The prosecution had sought a maximum 60.5 years, practically a life sentence.

For context, in the state of North Carolina, the maximum sentence for voluntary manslaughter is a little under five and a half years. In the courtroom, Thrasher was privy to the prosecution’s smoking gun: Johnson had previously signed a legally-binding acknowledgment of his HIV diagnosis. With the flick of a pen, nondisclosure was a criminal offense.

In his interviews, however, Thrasher found that Michael Johnson was semi-illiterate and had not been properly informed of the legal implications of the document he had signed. Nor had he been informed of the consequences of breaking the legal contract. Nor had he been counseled or given any legal advice prior to being charged. 

Michael Johnson was released from prison 25 years early after his ruling was overturned. His is a body in the viral underclass. 

Excerpted from Thrasher’s book The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide
Vito Russo speaks at the 1988 ACT UP demonstration at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C.
Credit: Rick Gerharter/HBO Documentary Films

Concluding his lecture, Thrasher quoted AIDS activist Vito Russo’s Why We Fight speech from the 1988 ACT UP Demonstration at the Department of Health and Human Services. In reading the entire transcript, I found that Russo was aware of the viral underclass, as Thrasher theorized, despite the term not yet existing in the academic ethos. He said in his address: 

“If I’m dying from anything — I’m dying from the fact that not enough rich, white, heterosexual men have gotten AIDS…. Living with AIDS in this country is like living in the twilight zone. Living with AIDS is like living through a war which is happening only for those people who happen to be in the trenches. Every time a shell explodes, you look around and you discover that you’ve lost more of your friends, but nobody else notices. It isn’t happening to them.” 

Is it possible to ever resolve the viral underclass in the US? As long as systemic inequities continue to exist, no. This may seem pessimistic or even cynical, but Thrasher concluded his lecture (and his book) with reserved optimism. “Let’s get to work,” he implored.

If we can identify and actively dismantle the systems that disproportionately burden certain populations with viruses and diseases, like a spool of yarn, we can begin to unravel the viral underclass in America.

Yes, infections should be treated with accessible and affordable medicine. Yes, healthcare should be expanded. Yes, we should continue to improve the efficacy of drugs and diagnostics. But, health interventions alone do not cure communities of disease.

Thrasher found that marginalized bodies will continue to be infected, in spite of medicinal intervention, if the inequities from which the viral underclass emerge are not concurrently cured. Let’s get to work.

If interested, here’s a link to Thrasher’s website and book: http://steventhrasher.com/

Post by Alex Clifford, Class of 2024

What is Biblical Research, Anyway? The Answer Might Surprise You

This is part one of a two-part series; next week we will dive into the nitty-gritty of biblical research, but for now, we’re focusing on what biblical research is and why it matters.

Image courtesy of Duke Divinity School

To the uninitiated, “biblical research” might not conjure up images of dancing, or analyzing films, or studying engineering. But meet Maximillion Whelan. A third-year M.Div. student at Duke, Whelan runs a website for film aficionados focusing on analyzing movie scenes and was recently published in Quarterly Review of Film and Video for an article on theology and film. He notes: “Biblical research sheds light on how everyday activities effectively shape history and are also shaped by history. By “zooming in,” delving into the details and contexts, biblical research enables us to simultaneously “zoom out” – to see what things we are taking for granted, where our readings have led us, and how we take our readings into other spheres of life.”

Image courtesy of Nicole Kallson (as part of her course Introduction to Theology and the Arts)

Or take Divinity School student Nicole Kallson. She is pursuing a Master’s of Theological Studies with a Certificate in Theology and the Arts.

“As a theologian and dancer, I use my background in dance to assist my understanding of the Bible.” Kallson explains. “I tend to focus on ideas of embodiment, beauty, and inter- and intra- personal relationships.”

Both students—along with countless other Blue Devils and other mascot identities—use their studies as a lens through which to examine themselves and their passions. And isn’t that what we emphasize so clearly at Duke—the interdisciplinary, interpersonal, interfaith, international, interwoven identities of people, places, and things? Is that not what research is all about in the end? Perhaps the purpose of biblical research is not as foreign to us as we may think at first.

Degree-seekers may come from expertise in literature, classical studies, practical faith, or other backgrounds that may easily come to mind. But they also come from natural sciences, physical sciences, political science, art and media studies, creative writing, engineering, medicine, sociology, public policy, economics, and so much more. And each of these students is applying their research and understanding of the Bible to their understanding of the world at large, seeking to become better, more intentional academics in the process.

The new Dean of Duke Divinity School was born and raised in Puerto Rico; he has prayed with Pope Francis and presented him with writings on interfaith dialogues. He also has Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in mechanical engineering.

Dean Edgardo Colon-Emeric moderated a symposium on the Bible last Friday, October 11, 2022 through the Karsh Alumni Center Forever Learning Institute (part of the Policing Pages series, which Jakaiyah Franklin also wrote about for the Blog!).

“It might seem odd to have a series focused on the Bible as a banned book, given that it’s the most polished book in history,” he opened. He gave an example further; for a time in recent Guatemalan history, possession of the Bible was persecuted as a means of targeting perceived Communist empathizers. Even within Christain communities, he explains, there has been discourse among devotees of certain translations and versions—not all of them amenable.

The event also featured Brent Strawn of the Duke Divinity School and Jennifer Knust from Trinity College of Arts & Sciences Department of Religious Studies.

Jennifer Knust during the Forever Learning Institute’s Policing Pages presentation on the Bible

“The survival of the New Testament as a text and a collection is a theological and practical achievement,” noted Knust. “It is repeatedly refreshed in response to new circumstances, even as remains of past approaches continue to shape what can happen next.”

It is because of the differing opinions of so many people over such a long time that we have different faiths, and biblical research uses the lens of Christianity to evaluate that phenomenon.

Knust continues: “Today we know that there are over 5,000 manuscript copies of the New Testament, none of which are identical in every particular.”

She herself was a member of the board of the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition—the most recent scholarly translation of the Bible, published in 2021. She elaborated on her feelings on the dynamics and fluidity of the text, describing a constant push and pull of desire and tradition. Perhaps researchers, in the present, past, or future, may desire to change words, meanings, or uses of the Bible, but they are contradicted by a tradition dictated by the populous.

Biblical research seeks to answer questions about the Bible— and by extension, the fruitfulness of humanity. The sustainability of religious texts of all kinds is a testament (pun intended) to the success of human minds compounded over thousands of years.

A 1611 copy of the Authorized Version Knust uses as an example of different Protestant translations.

On this PeopleMover-style tour of biblical research, I hope we’ve taken away some key points:

Firstly, the work of many biblical researchers is deeply personal. We’ve discovered through this that the work of any researcher in any field has the potential to be deeply personal.

Additionally, we learned that the interdisciplinary reach of biblical studies works inversely; students may turn to biblical research from other subjects to enhance their work, or they may even turn to other subjects to enhance their work in biblical research.

And finally, we arrive at our destination; next week we’ll talk more in-depth about what biblical research entails and meet some key players in those conversations.

Post by Olivia Ares, Class of 2025

It’s Their Future and Gen Z Has Already Seen a Lot

Young people have the power to generate change, whether they know it or not.

At least that was the sentiment expressed by the Director of Polling at the Harvard Institute of Politics, John Della Volpe at a seminar earlier this month. A leading authority on the intersection of young Americans and political influence, Della Volpe discussed the key role Generation Z will play in the 2022 and 2024 elections.

But does Generation Z really have what it takes to change the course of American politics?

“We spend a lot of time talking about Gen Z, and not enough time talking to you,” Della Volpe began as he addressed a crowd of young Duke students. “This is one of the rare occasions where I’m going to be doing most of the talking rather than most of the listening.”

Stanford Researcher Roberta Katz describes Generation Z — those born between 1997 and 2012 — as a highly collaborative cohort with a pragmatic attitude about generational issues like political engagement.

Exit Polls from NBC reveal that Gen Z was responsible for more than 9% of total votes in the 2020 presidential election, with that number only expected to grow. In Georgia and Arizona, young voters turned out to be critical for President Joe Biden’s victory, Della Volpe said.

Exit Polls From NBC show 2020 total votes for Biden compared to Trump, with Generation Z voting for Biden two-to-one.

He urges Gen Z to “remind elected officials that you did change things and that you will continue changing things.” Della Volpe predicts that Gen Z’s choices will also be crucial in the 2022 midterms.

Occupy Wall Street, the election of Trump, the Parkland Shooting, Greta Thunberg, and the killing of George Floyd were five events that Della Volpe believed were crucial in shaping this trajectory, as well as Gen Z’s political view as a whole.

“We have to look collectively at what you as a cohort saw and how that’s affecting you. In fact, I think that’s a far better way to think about our politics than what state you are in.”

The way parents think about bills and taxes, the way that weighs on your shoulders, that’s the way we think about living and dying.

Gen Z woman in conversation with John Della Volpe

“No generation in 70 years has dealt with more chaos, more trauma, more struggle before your brain is even fully developed,” Della Volpe asserted. He maintains that Generation Z is dealing with extremely complex issues much earlier than other generations.

Research from the American Psychological Association bears this out, indicating that Gen Zers are currently the most stressed demographic of people in the United States. They are also significantly more likely to rate their mental health as poor in comparison to other generations.

“I’m very cognizant of not putting any more pressure on you,” said Della Volpe. “You are already doing such a good job of managing yourselves and managing your situation.”

John Della Volpe’s book, published earlier this year.

Generation Z is managing so well, in fact, that Della Volpe argues they are essential to the success of US politics moving forward. In his book ‘Fight: How Generation Z is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America,’ Della Volpe argues that the challenges unique to Gen Z prepare them to take control of their future in this nation.

Thanks to Della Volpe the answer is overwhelmingly clear: Gen Z does have what it takes to turn this nation around. So get out there and vote!

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Post By Skylar Hughes, Class of 2025

“Of Sound Mind”: a Discussion of the Hearing Brain

“To me [this image] captures the wonder, the awe, the beauty of sound and the brain that tries to make sense of it,” said professor Nina Kraus, Northwestern University researcher and author of “Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World.”

Stop. What do you hear?

We might not always think about the sounds around us, but our brains are always listening, said Northwestern University professor Nina Kraus.

Kraus, auditory researcher and author of “Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World,” spoke via Zoom to a Duke audience in October. She has published more than four hundred papers on the auditory system in humans and other animals and how it’s affected by conditions like autism, aging, and concussion. She discussed some of her findings and how “the sound mind” affects us in our day-to-day lives.

One of the slides from Kraus’s presentation. We can think of sound as having many “ingredients.”

“I think of the sound mind as encompassing how we think, how we move, how we sense, and how we feel,” Kraus said. We live in a “visually dominated world,” but for hearing people, sound plays an important role in language, music, rhythm, and how we perceive the world.

One of the slides from Kraus’s presentation. The human auditory system involves not just the ears but also several regions of the brain. The “hearing brain” engages movement, cognition, and emotions along with interpreting direct sensory input from all senses.

Kraus discussed the auditory system and how much of what we think of as hearing takes place in the brain. We can think of sound as signals outside the head and electricity as signals inside the head (neural processing). When those two merge, learning occurs, and we can make sound-to-meaning connections.

Another slide from Kraus’s presentation. In an experiment, teaching rabbits to associate a sound with meaning (in this case, more carrots) changed patterns of neuron firing in the auditory cortex, even in individual neurons. “Same sound, same neuron, and yet the neuron responded differently… because now there’s a sound-to-meaning connection,” Kraus said.

Despite how sensitive our neurons and brains are to sound, things can get lost in translation. Kraus studies how conditions like concussions and hearing loss can adversely affect auditory processing. Even among healthy brains, we all hear and interpret sounds differently. People have unique “sonic fingerprints” that are relatively stable over time within an individual brain but differ between people. These patterns of sound recognition are apparent when scientists record brain responses to music or other sounds.

“One of the biological measures that we have been using in human and in animal models,” Kraus said, is FFR (frequency following response) to speech. FFR-to-speech can be used to analyze an individual’s auditory processing system. It also allows scientists to convert brain responses back into sound waves. “The sound wave and the brainwave resemble each other, which is just remarkable.”

One of Kraus’s slides. Technology called frequency following response (FFR) can be used to convert brain waves back into original sound (like a song).

This technology helps reveal just how attuned our brains are to sound. When we hear a song, our brain waves respond to everything from the beat to the melody. Those brain waves are so specific to that particular song or sound that when scientists convert the brain waves back into sound, the resulting music is still recognizable.

When scientists try this on people who have experienced a concussion, for instance, the recreated music can sound different or garbled. Experiments that compare healthy and unhealthy brains can help reveal what concussions do to the brain and our ability to interpret sound. But not everything that affects auditory processing is bad.

Musical training is famously good for the brain, and experiments done by Kraus and other scientists support that conclusion. “The musician signature—something that develops over time—” has specific patterns, and it can enhance certain components of auditory processing over time. Making music might also improve language skills. “The music and language signatures really overlap,” Kraus said, “which is why making music is so good for strengthening our sound mind.” Kids who can synchronize to a beat, for example, tend to have better language skills according to some of the experiments Kraus has been involved with.

Musicians are also, on average, better at processing sound in noisy environments. Musicians respond well in quiet and noisy environments. Non-musicians, on the other hand, respond well in quiet environments, but that response “really breaks down” in noisy ones.

Interestingly, “Making music has a lifelong impact. Making music in early life can strengthen the sound mind when one is seventy or eighty years old.”

A slide from Kraus’s presentation. Musicians tend to be better at processing sounds in noisy environments.

Exercise, too, can improve auditory processing. “Elite division 1 athletes have especially quiet brains” with less neural noise. That’s a good thing; it lets incoming information “stand out more.”

In experiments, healthy athletes also have a more consistent response over time across multiple trials, especially women.

These benefits aren’t limited to elite athletes, though. According to Kraus, “Being fit and flexible is one of the best things you can do for your brain,” Kraus said.

Kraus and her team have a regularly updated website about their work. For those who want to learn more about their research, they have a short video about their research approach and an online lecture Kraus gave with the Kennedy Center.

Nina Kraus with a piano. “Science is a deeply human endeavor,” she said, “and I think we often forget that. It’s made by people.”
Photo courtesy of Kraus and colleague Jenna Cunningham, Ph.D.
Post by Sophie Cox, Class of 2025

Banned Books Then and Now

With the never-ending news of schools banning books, one has to ask about the history and effectiveness of banned books. Fortunately, the Duke Forever Learning Institute hosted a seminar on the history of banned books in late September and provided examples that showed the ineffectiveness of banned books throughout time.

There was one particular story, however, that caught my eye, and that was the retelling of the history behind a banned book written by a man named Gottschalk. Clare Woods, an associate professor of Classical Studies at Duke, delineated the narrative of Gottschalk’s life from birth to prisoner.

A map containing the monasteries Gottschalk visited. (provided by Dr. Clare Woods)

Gottschalk was born to an aristocratic family around 803 AD and started his academic career when he moved into Fulda, a monastery, to become a monk. However, in 829 AD, Gottschalk left Fulda for reasons based either on the loss of his older brother or the enlightenment he received from the monastery he attended while studying abroad.

Upon leaving Fulda, Gottschalk studied at the monasteries of Corbie and then moved to northern Italy after he received his orientation as a priest. Gottschalk was unusual because monks tended not to move around that much, and monks also tended not to speak about their studies on heretical doctrine. Unfortunately for Gottschalk, he ignored the criticisms from other monks and instead grew confident in his studies to the point where he wrote a book about them.

While receiving hate for his ideas from multiple people, one man from Gottschalk’s past was truly adamant about having Gottschalk punished. This man was named Rabanus (Hrabanus), and he was accused by Gottschalk of coercing Gottschalk’s earlier career as a monk. From that, and with Gottschalk leaving the Fulda, Rabanus developed a personal vendetta against Gottschalk.

This is an excerpt from Gottschalk’s confession, which was provided by Dr. Clare Woods.

Gottschalk, the confident man he was, decided to defend himself at a Synod in Mainz, but it proved unsuccessful because he was condemned by the Synod and banned from the Kingdom of Louis. From there on, things did not improve for Gottschalk because, in the following year, he was brought to a second Synod that was attended by King Charles, who was the brother of King Louis the German. By the end of this Synod, Gottschalk was stripped of his priesthood, sentenced to silence, and imprisoned.

However, even with the punishments Gottschalk personally received and his books being burned, his books were still preserved and influential on others.

This influence seen with Gottschalk’s books after being banned was not an anomaly because that was seen with all banned books throughout history.

Another example was given by Lauren Ginsberg, an associate professor of classical studies, who presented Permussius Cordis, an author who lived under the Roman emperor Tiberius in the 1st century AD.

His story ended in tragedy since his books were included in a mass book burning and he was sentenced to death. However, his book still was able to influence the Roman population due to his daughter Marsha’s vigilance in keeping her father’s book alive.

While I only provided two examples, this pattern of books withstanding their ban is throughout time, and it is being repeated in the present. Across this country, book banning is back in style. In 2018, there were only 347 books that schools formally challenged, but in 2021 it became 1,500.

An example of books that have been banned in multiple schools (Freedman)

While this does put light on our current education system in this country, this is simply a gesture. It does make us think about what children will be learning in schools, but because the books are banned in schools does not mean the information within those books will not reach their target demographic. As seen in history, knowledge always finds a way of spreading, but of course, that is dependent on those who want to expand that knowledge.

At the end of this article, I hope you are reassured that seeing a banned book does not mean it is forever silenced. Instead, I hope that by reading this, you understand that you have all the power to ensure that the words within a book can withstand anything, including time.

Post by Jakaiyah Franklin, Class of 2025

Citation: Freedman, Samuel G. “A Display of Banned or Censored Books at a Bookstore Last October. Over a Recent 9 Month Period More than 1,500 Books Have Been Banned in Schools, Most Featuring Nonwhite Protagonists, Dealing with Racism, or Addressing the LGBTQ Experience.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 27 June 2022, https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-06-27/book-bans-critical-race-theory-wisconsin. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.

Medicine Under a Microscope

Duke Research Week 2022 featured a range of speakers from across all disciplines. The Lefkowitz Distinguished Lecture on January 31st highlighted some of our favorite things here at Duke Research Blog: ingenuity and perspective. 

Dr. Huda Yahya Zoghbi’s career spans decades; her Wikipedia page sports an “Awards and Honors” section that takes up my entire computer screen. She is a geneticist, neuroscientist, pediatric neurologist, pharmaceutical executive, and literature lover. Her presentation kicked off 2022 Research Week with a discussion of her work on Rett Syndrome. (View the session)

Rett Syndrome is a rare genetic disorder. The gene that researchers identified as the driver of the syndrome is MeCP2, which is especially active in brain cells. Certain mutations of this one gene can be responsible for a loss of speech, development issues, and persistent fidgeting. 

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The MeCP2 protein. Image: Wikipedia Commons

Children with Rett Syndrome faced chronic misdiagnosis, and even with proper care were limited by a lack of research.

Duke’s Dr. Robert Lefkowitz introduced Zoghbi at the beginning of the seminar and explained how she came to become the leading expert on this relatively unknown disorder. After completing medical school in Beirut in the midst of the ravaging Lebanese Civil War, she came to Texas Children’s Hospital, where she was able to observe and diagnose her first case of the syndrome, a process spurred by a simple interest in a newly-published journal article.

Holistic knowledge of Rett Syndrome is completely dependent on genetic research. A mutation on the MeCP2 gene causes errors in transcription, the reading out of DNA in your cells which leads to the production of proteins.

The mutated gene’s MeCP2 protein is then lacking the ability to do its job, which is helping other genes be expressed, or actively transcribed.

It’s a vicious cycle; like when you go to sleep late one night, so you sleep in the next day, then go to sleep late the next night, then sleep in the next day, and so forth.

In order to simulate and measure the effect of different kind of mutations on the MeCP2 gene, Zoghbi and her team studied genetically modified mice. While Rett Syndrome is caused by a lack of MeCP2 function, an overactive MeCP2 gene causes MeCP2 duplication syndrome. Varying degrees of gene efficiency then produce varying degrees of severity in the syndrome’s traits, with fatality at either end of the curve.  

Varying degrees of phenotype severity.

Zoghbi’s talk focused mainly on the mechanics of the disorder on a genetic level, familiar territory to both Nobel Laureate Lefkowitz and Duke Medicine Dean Mary Klotman, who shared some discussion with Zoghbi.

This medicine on a microscale is applicable to treating genetic disorders, not just identifying them. Zoghbi has been able to experimentally correct MeCP2 duplication disorder in mice by modifying receptors in a way that reverses the effects of the disorder.

The symptoms of Rett Syndrome are physical; they present themselves as distinct phenotypes of a subtle difference in genotype that’s too small to see. The field of genetics in medicine is responsible for making that connection.

Post by Olivia Ares, Class 2025

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