Category: Students Page 19 of 42

Heating Up the Summer, 3D Style

On June 12, 2018

In Climate/Global Change, Computers/Technology, Engineering, Environment/Sustainability, Guest Post, Students

While some students like to spend their summer recovering from a long year of school work, others are working diligently in the Innovation Co-Lab in the Telcom building on West Campus.

They’re working on the impacts of dust and particulate matter (PM) pollution on solar panel performance, and discovering new technologies that map out the 3D volume of the ocean.

The Co-Lab is one of three 3D printing labs located on campus. It allows students and faculty the opportunity to creatively explore research through the use of new and emerging technologies.

Third-year PhD candidate Michael Valerino said his long term research project focuses on how dust and air pollution impacts the performance of solar panels.

“I’ve been designing a low-cost prototype which will monitor the impact of dust and air pollution on solar panels,” said Valerino. “The device is going to be used to monitor the impacts of dust and particulate matter (PM) pollution on solar panel performance. This processis known as soiling. This is going to be a low-cost alternative (~$200 ) to other monitoring options that are at least $5,000.”

Most of the 3D printers come with standard Polylactic acid (PLA) material for printing. However, because his first prototype completely melted in India’s heat, Valerino decided to switch to black carbon fiber and infused nylon.

“It really is a good fit for what I want to do,” he said. “These low-cost prototypes will be deployed in China, India, and the Arabian Peninsula to study global soiling impacts.”

In a step-by-step process, he applied acid-free glue to the base plate that holds the black carbon fiber and infused nylon. He then placed the glass plate into the printer and closely examined how the thick carbon fiber holds his project together.

Michael Bergin, a professor of civil and environmental engineering professor at Duke collaborated with the Indian Institute of Technology-Gandhinagar and the University of Wisconsin last summer to work on a study about soiling.

The study indicated that there was a decrease in solar energy as the panels became dirtier over time. The solar cells jumped 50 percent in efficiency after being cleaned for the first time in several weeks. Valerino’s device will be used to expand Bergin’s work.

As Valerino tackles his project, Duke student volunteers and high school interns are in another part of the Co-Lab developing technology to map the ocean floor.

The Blue Devil Ocean Engineering team will be competing in the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, a global technology competition challenging teams to advance deep-sea technologies for autonomous, fast and high-resolution ocean exploration. (Their mentor, Martin Brooke, was recently featured on Science Friday.)

The team is developing large, highly redundant carbon drones that are eight feet across. The drones will fly over the ocean and drop pods into the water that will sink to collect sonar data.

Tyler Bletsch, a professor of the practice in electrical and computer engineering, is working alongside the team. He describes the team as having the most creative approach in the competition.

“We have many parts of this working, but this summer is really when it needs to come together,” Bletsch said. “Last year, we made it through round one of the competition and secured $100,000 for the university. We’re now using that money for the final phase of the competition.”

The final phase of the competition is scheduled to be held fall 2018.
Though campus is slow this summer, the Innovation Co-Lab is keeping busy. You can keep up-to-date with their latest projects here.

Post by Alexis Owens

Looking at Cooking as a Science Experiment

By Will Sheehan

On April 13, 2018

In Chemistry, Science Communication & Education, Students

From five-star restaurants to Grandma’s homemade cookies, cooking is an art that has transformed the way we taste food. But haven’t you ever wondered how cooking works? How in the world did people discover how to make Dipping Dots or Jell-O?

Patrick Charbonneau is an Associate Professor of Chemistry here at Duke and last Friday he gave a delicious talk about the science of cooking (with samples!).

Patrick Charbonneau, Duke Chemist and Foodie

Around 10,000 years ago humans discovered that by fermenting milk you could turn it into yogurt, something that is more transportable, lasts longer, and digests easier. In the 1600s a new cooking apparatus called the “bone digester” (pressure cooker) allowed you to cook things faster while enhancing the flavor. When the 1800s came around, a scientist named Eben Horsford discovered that adding an acid with sodium bicarbonate creates baking powder. Soon enough scientific and kitchen minds started to collaborate, and new creations were made in the culinary world. As you can see, a lot of fundamental cooking techniques and ingredients we use today are a product of scientific discoveries.

Old-school pressure cookers. Forerunners of the Instant Pot.

Whisked Toffee

Freezer toffee, AKA caramel

A huge part of cooking is controlling the transformation of matter, or “a change in phase.” Professor Charbonneau presented a very cool example demonstrating how controlling this phase shift can affect your experience eating something. He made the same toffee recipe twice, but he changed it slightly as the melted toffee mixture was cooling. One version you stick straight in the freezer; the other you whisk as it cools. The whisked version turns out crumbly and sweeter; the other one turns into a chewy, shiny caramel. The audience got samples, and I could easily tell how different each version looked and tasted.

Charbonneau explained that while both toffees have the same ingredients, most people prefer the crumbly one because it seems sweeter (I agreed). This is because the chewier one takes longer to dissolve onto your taste buds, so your brain registers it as less sweet.

I was fascinated to learn that a lot of food is mostly just water. It’s weird to think a solid thing could be made of water, yet some foods are up to 99% water and still elastic! We have polymers — long repeating patterns of atoms in a chain — to thank for that. In fact, you can turn almost any liquid into a gel. Polymers take up little space but play a vital role in not only foods but other everyday objects, like contact lenses.

Charbonneau also showed us a seemingly magical way to make cake. He took about half a Dixie cup of cake batter, stuck a whipping siphon charged with nitrous oxide inside it for a second, then threw it in the microwave for thirty seconds. Boom, easy as cake. Out came a cup full of some pretty darn good fluffy chocolate cake. The gas bubbles in the butter and egg batter expand when they are heated up, causing the batter to gel and form a solid network.

Professor Charbonneau is doing stuff like this in his class here at Duke, “The Chemistry and Physics of Cooking,” all the time.

In the past ten years a surge in science-cooking related classes has emerged. The experiments you could do in a kitchen-lab are so cool and can make science appealing to those who might normally shy away from it.

Another cool thing I learned at the stations outside of Charbonneau’s talk was that Dipping Dots are made by dripping melted ice cream into a bowl of liquid nitrogen. The nitrogen is so cold that it flash-freezes the ice cream droplet into a ball-like shape!

Post by Will Sheehan

Will Sheehan

Stretchable, Twistable Wires for Wearable Electronics

By Kara Manke

On April 2, 2018

In Chemistry, Engineering, Faculty, Nanotech, Physics, Students

A new conductive “felt” carries electricity even when twisted, bent and stretched. Credit: Matthew Catenacci

The exercise-tracking power of a Fitbit may soon jump from your wrist and into your clothing.

Researchers are seeking to embed electronics such as fitness trackers and health monitors into our shirts, hats, and shoes. But no one wants stiff copper wires or silicon transistors deforming their clothing or poking into their skin.

Scientists in Benjamin Wiley’s lab at Duke have created new conductive “felt” that can be easily patterned onto fabrics to create flexible wires. The felt, composed of silver-coated copper nanowires and silicon rubber, carries electricity even when bent, stretched and twisted, over and over again.

“We wanted to create wiring that is stretchable on the body,” said Matthew Catenacci, a graduate student in Wiley’s group.

The conductive felt is made of stacks of interwoven silver-coated copper nanotubes filled with a stretchable silicone rubber (left). When stretched, felt made from more pliable rubber is more resilient to small tears and holes than felts made of stiffer rubber (middle). These tears can be seen in small cavities in the felt (right). Credit: Matthew Catenacci

To create a flexible wire, the team first sucks a solution of copper nanowires and water through a stencil, creating a stack of interwoven nanowires in the desired shape. The material is similar to the interwoven fibers that comprise fabric felt, but on a much smaller scale, said Wiley, an associate professor of chemistry at Duke.

“The way I think about the wires are like tiny sticks of uncooked spaghetti,” Wiley said. “The water passes through, and then you end up with this pile of sticks with a high porosity.”

The interwoven nanowires are heated to 300 F to melt the contacts together, and then silicone rubber is added to fill in the gaps between the wires.

To show the pliability of their new material, Catenacci patterned the nanowire felt into a variety of squiggly, snaking patterns. Stretching and twisting the wires up to 300 times did not degrade the conductivity.

The material maintains its conductivity when twisted and stretched. Credit: Matthew Catenacci

“On a larger scale you could take a whole shirt, put it over a vacuum filter, and with a stencil you could create whatever wire pattern you want,” Catenacci said. “After you add the silicone, so you will just have a patch of fabric that is able to stretch.”

Their felt is not the first conductive material that displays the agility of a gymnast. Flexible wires made of silver microflakes also exhibit this unique set of properties. But the new material has the best performance of any other material so far, and at a much lower cost.

“This material retains its conductivity after stretching better than any other material with this high of an initial conductivity. That is what separates it,” Wiley said.

“Stretchable Conductive Composites from Cu-Ag Nanowire Felt,” Matthew J. Catenacci, Christopher Reyes, Mutya A. Cruz and Benjamin J. Wiley. ACS Nano, March 14, 2018. DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.8b00887

Post by Kara Manke

MRI Tags Stick to Molecules with Chemical “Velcro®”

By Kara Manke

On March 9, 2018

In Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, Faculty, Medicine, Students

In the new technique, MRI chemical tags attach to a target molecule and nothing else – kind of like how Velcro only sticks to itself. Credit: tanakawho, via Flickr.

Imagine attaching a beacon to a drug molecule and following its journey through our winding innards, tracking just where and how it interacts with the chemicals in our bodies to help treat illnesses.

Duke scientists may be closer to doing just that. They have developed a chemical tag that can be attached to molecules to make them light up under magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

This tag or “lightbulb” changes its frequency when the molecule interacts with another molecule, potentially allowing researchers to both locate the molecule in the body and see how it is metabolized.

“MRI methods are very sensitive to small changes in the chemical structure, so you can actually use these tags to directly image chemical transformations,” said Thomas Theis, an assistant research professor in the chemistry department at Duke.

Chemical tags that light up under MRI are not new. In 2016, the Duke team of Warren S. Warren’s lab and Qiu Wang’s lab created molecular lightbulbs for MRI that burn brighter and longer than any previously discovered.

A photo of graduate students Junu Bae and Zijian Zhou in front of a bookshelf.

Junu Bae and Zijian Zhou, the co-first authors of the paper. Credit: Qiu Wang, Duke University.

In a study published March 9 in Science Advances, the researchers report a new method for attaching tags to molecules, allowing them to tag molecules indirectly to a broader scope of molecules than they could before.

“The tags are like lightbulbs covered in Velcro,” said Junu Bae, a graduate student in Qiu Wang’s lab at Duke. “We attach the other side of the Velcro to the target molecule, and once they find each other they stick.”

This reaction is what researchers call bioorthogonal, which means that the tag will only stick to the molecular target and won’t react with any other molecules.

And the reaction was designed with another important feature in mind — it generates a rare form of nitrogen gas that also lights up under MRI.

“One could dream up a lot of potential applications for the nitrogen gas, but one that we have been thinking about is lung imaging,” Theis said.

Currently the best way to image the lungs is with xenon gas, but this method has the downside of putting patients to sleep. “Nitrogen gas would be perfectly safe to inhale because it is what you inhale in the air anyways,” Theis said.

A stylized chemical diagram of the hyperpolarization process

In the new technique, a type of molecule called a tetrazine is hyperpolarized, making it “light up” under MRI (illustrated on the left). It is then tagged to a target molecule through a what is called a bioorthogonal reaction. The reaction also generates a rare form of nitrogen gas that can be spotted under MRI (illustrated on the right). Credit: Junu Bae and Seoyoung Cho, Duke University.

Other applications could include watching how air flows through porous materials or studying the nitrogen fixation process in plants.

One downside to the new tags is that they don’t shine as long or as brightly as other MRI molecular lightbulbs, said Zijian Zhou, a graduate student in Warren’s lab at Duke.

The team is tinkering with the formula for polarizing, or lighting up, the molecule tags to increase their lifetime and brilliance, and to make them more compatible with chemical conditions in the human body.

“We are now developing new techniques and new procedures which may be helpful for driving the polarization levels even higher, so we can have even better signal for these applications,” Zhou said.

“¹⁵N₄-1,2,4,5-tetrazines as potential molecular tags: Integrating bioorthogonal chemistry with hyperpolarization and unearthing para-N₂,” Junu Bae, Zijian Zhou, Thomas Theis, Warren S. Warren and Qiu Wang. Science Advances, March 9, 2018. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aar2978

Post by Kara Manke

How Earth’s Earliest Lifeforms Protected Their Genes

By Kara Manke

On March 2, 2018

In Biology, Chemistry, Faculty, Genetics/Genomics, Physics, Students

A colorful hot spring in Yellowstone National Park

Heat-loving thermophile bacteria may have been some of the earliest lifeforms on Earth. Researchers are studying their great great great grandchildren, like those living in Yellowstone’s Grand Prismatic Spring, to understand how these early bacteria repaired their DNA.

Think your life is hard? Imagine being a tiny bacterium trying to get a foothold on a young and desolate Earth. The earliest lifeforms on our planet endured searing heat, ultraviolet radiation and an atmosphere devoid of oxygen.

Benjamin Rousseau, a research technician in David Beratan’s lab at Duke, studies one of the molecular machines that helped these bacteria survive their harsh environment. This molecule, called photolyase, fixes DNA damaged by ultraviolet (UV) radiation — the same wavelengths of sunlight that give us sunburn and put us at greater risk of skin cancer.

“Anything under the sun — in both meanings of the phrase — has to have ways to repair itself, and photolyase proteins are one of them,” Rousseau said. “They are one of the most ancient repair proteins.”

Though these proteins have been around for billions of years, scientists are still not quite sure exactly how they work. In a new study, Rousseau and coworkers, working with Professor David Beratan and Assistant Research Professor Agostino Migliore, used computer simulations to study photolyase in thermophiles, the great great great great grandchildren of Earth’s original bacterial pioneers.

The study appeared in the Feb. 28 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

DNA is built of chains of bases — A, C, G and T — whose order encodes our genetic information. UV light can trigger two adjacent bases to react and latch onto one other, rendering these genetic instructions unreadable.

Photolyase uses a molecular antenna to capture light from the sun and convert it into an electron. It then hands the electron over to the DNA strand, sparking a reaction that splits the two bases apart and restores the genetic information.

A ribbon diagram of a photolyase protein

Photolyase proteins use a molecular antenna (green, blue and red structure on the right) to harvest light and convert it into an electron. The adenine-containing structure in the middle hands the electron to the DNA strand, splitting apart DNA bases. Credit: Benjamin Rousseau, courtesy of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Rousseau studied the role of a molecule called adenine in shuttling the electron from the molecular antenna to the DNA strand. He looked at photolyase in both the heat-loving ancestors of ancient bacteria, called thermophiles, and more modern bacteria like E. Coli that thrive at moderate temperatures, called mesophiles.

He found that in thermophiles, adenine played a role in transferring the electron to the DNA. But in E. coli, the adenine was in a different position, providing mainly structural support.

The results “strongly suggest that mesophiles and thermophiles fundamentally differ in their use of adenine for this electron transfer repair mechanism,” Rousseau said.

He also found that when he cooled E. Coli down to 20 degrees Celsius — about 68 degrees Fahrenheit — the adenine shifted back in place, resuming its transport function.

“It’s like a temperature-controlled switch,” Rousseau said.

Though humans no longer use photolyase for DNA repair, the protein persists in life as diverse as bacteria, fungi and plants — and is even being studied as an ingredient in sunscreens to help repair UV-damaged skin.

Understanding exactly how photolyase works may also help researchers design proteins with a variety of new functions, Rousseau said.

“Photolyase does all of the work on its own — it harvests the light, it transfers the electron over a huge distance to the other site, and then it cleaves the DNA bases,” Rousseau said. “Proteins with that kind of plethora of functions tend to be an attractive target for protein engineering.”

Post by Kara Manke

How A Zebrafish’s Squiggly Cartilage Transforms into a Strong Spine

By Kara Manke

On February 21, 2018

In Animals, Biology, Faculty, Medicine, Students

A column of green cartilage cells divides into an alternating pattern of green cartilage and red vertebra

Our spines begin as a flexible column called the notochord. Over time, cells on the notochord surface divide into alternating segments that go on to form cartilage and vertebrae.

In the womb, our strong spines start as nothing more than a rope of rubbery tissue. As our bodies develop, this flexible cord, called the notochord, morphs into a column of bone and cartilage sturdy enough to hold up our heavy upper bodies.

Graduate student Susan Wopat and her colleagues in Michel Bagnat’s lab at Duke are studying the notochords of the humble zebrafish to learn how this cartilage-like rope grows into a mature spine.

In a new paper, they detail the cellular messaging that directs this transformation.

It all comes down to Notch receptors on the notochord surface, they found. Notch receptors are a special type of protein that sits astride cell membranes. When two cells touch, these Notch receptors link up, forming channels that allow messages to rapidly travel between large groups of cells.

Notch receptors divide the outer notochord cells into two alternating groups – one group is told to grow into bone, while the other is told to grow into cartilage. Over time, bone starts to form on the surface of the notochord and works its way inward, eventually forming mature vertebrae.

Meddling with cellular signaling on the notochord surface caused zebrafish spines to develop deformities. The first and third image show healthy spines, and the second and fourth image show deformed spines.

When the team tinkered with the Notch signaling on the surface cells, they found that the spinal vertebrae came out deformed – too big, too small, or the wrong shape.

“These results demonstrate that the notochord plays a critical role in guiding spine development,” Wopat said. “Further investigation into these findings may help us better understand the origin of spinal defects in humans.”

“Spine patterning is guided by segmentation of the notochord sheath,” Susan Wopat, Jennifer Bagwell, Kaelyn D. Sumigray, Amy L. Dickson, Leonie F. Huitema, Kenneth D. Poss, Stefan Schulte-Merker, Michel Bagnat. Cell, February 20, 2018. DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2018.01.084

Post by Kara Manke

Student Ingenuity vs. Environmental Issues (like Cow Farts)

By Will Sheehan

On February 16, 2018

In Animals, Climate/Global Change, Engineering, Environment/Sustainability, Students

Lots of creative and potentially life changing ideas filled the Fitzpatrick CIEMAS atrium last weekend. From devices meant to address critical environmental issues such as global warming and lion fish invasiveness, to apps that help you become more sustainable, Duke’s Blueprint tech ideation conference showcased some awesome, good ol’ student-led ingenuity.

These bright students from around Durham (mostly from Duke) competed in teams to create something that would positively impact the environment. The projects were judged for applicability, daringness, and feasibility, among other things. During the Project Expo, all teams briefly presented to viewers like a school science fair.

One of the projects I liked a lot was called Entropy—a website with your own personal plant (I named mine “Pete”) that grows or dies depending on your sustainable actions throughout the day. The user answers simple yes or no questions, such as, “did you turn off the lights today?”

You can also complete daily goals to get accessories like a hat or mustache for your plant. The website connects to Facebook, so you can track your friends’ progress and see how green they’re living. Ultimately it’s just a good, fun way to keep your sustainability in check. Pete was looking super-cute after I spammed the yes button.

Another interesting innovation posed a solution to the difficulty of catching lion fish. Humans are a lion fish’s only predator, and we hunt them by spear fishing. Since lion fish are highly invasive, catching them en-masse could seriously benefit the biodiversity of the ocean (plus, they taste delicious). So one team came up with a canopy like contraption that attracts lion fish to hang out underneath it, and then snatches them all up at once like a net. Pretty neat idea, and if it was implemented on a large scale could be a huge benefit to the Earth’s oceans (and restaurants)!

After the expo, the top seven teams were selected and given three minutes to present to the judges and audience as a whole.

Every project was astounding. “Collide-o-scope” came up with a simple Arduino-based device to transmit elephant seismic activity to train drivers nearby in order to reduce the number of train-elephant collisions in India and Sri Lanka — currently a huge problem, for both us as humans and the elephant population.

Another team, “Manatee Marker,” proposed a system of solar powered buoys to detect manatees, with the hope of reducing frequent manatee-boat accidents. Considering that manatees are quiet, basically camouflaged, and thermally invisible, this was quite an ingenious task.

Perhaps my favorite project, “Algenie” stole the show. Methane gas is a huge factor to global warming — around twenty-five times more potent as a heat-trapping gas than Carbon Dioxide — and a lot of it comes from cow farts. However, we’ve recently discovered that putting seaweed in cow feed actually lowers methane emissions almost entirely! So this team came up with a vertical, three-dimensional way to grow algae — opposed to “two-dimensionally” growing across a pond — that would maximize production. Global warming is obviously a massive issue right now and Algenie is looking to change that. They ended up getting first place, and winning a prize of $1,000 along with GoPros for every team member.

Algenie’s prototype

At the end of the day, it wasn’t about the prize money. The competition was meant to generate creative and practical ideas, while promoting making a difference. After attending the expo I felt more aware of all the environmental issues and influenced to help out. Even if you don’t feel like spending the time drafting up a crazy buoy manatee-detecting system, you can still do your part by living sustainably day to day.

Blueprint has done an awesome job of spurring young, enthusiastic students towards helping this planet — one cow fart at a time.

Post by Will Sheehan; Pictures from Duke Conservation Tech

“I Heart Tech Fair” Showcases Cutting-Edge VR and More

By Will Sheehan

On February 12, 2018

In Computers/Technology, Engineering, Students, Visualization

Duke’s tech game is stronger than you might think.

OIT held an “I Love Tech Fair” in the Technology Engagement Center / Co-Lab on Feb. 6 that was open to anyone to come check out things like 3D printers and augmented reality, while munching on some Chick-fil-a and cookies. There was a raffle for some sweet prizes, too.

I got a full demonstration of the 3D printing process—it’s so easy! It requires some really expensive software called Fusion, but thankfully Duke is awesome and students can get it for free. You can make some killer stuff 3D printing, the technology is so advanced now. I’ve seen all kinds of things: models of my friend’s head, a doorstop made out of someone’s name … one guy even made a working ukulele apparently!

One of the cooler things at the fair was Augmented Reality books. These books look like ordinary picture books, but looking at a page through your phone’s camera, the image suddenly comes to life in 3D with tons of detail and color, seemingly floating above the book! All you have to do is download an app and get the right book. Augmented reality is only getting better as time goes on and will soon be a primary tool in education and gaming, which is why Duke Digital Initiative (DDI) wanted to show it off.

By far my favorite exhibit at the tech fair was virtual reality. Throw on a headset and some bulky goggles, grab a controller in each hand, and suddenly you’re in another world. The guy running the station, Mark McGill, had actually hand-built the machine that ran it all. Very impressive guy. He told me the machine is the most expensive and important part, since it accounts for how smooth the immersion is. The smoother the immersion, the more realistic the experience. And boy, was it smooth. A couple years ago I experienced virtual reality at my high school and thought it was cool (I did get a little nauseous), but after Mark set me up with the “HTC Vive” connected to his sophisticated machine, it blew me away (with no nausea, too).

I smiled the whole time playing “Super Hot,” where I killed incoming waves of people in slow motion with ninja stars, guns, and rocks. Mark had tons of other games too, all downloaded from Steam, for both entertainment and educational purposes. One called “Organon” lets you examine human anatomy inside and out, and you can even upload your own MRIs. There’s an unbelievable amount of possibilities VR offers. You could conquer your fear of public speaking by being simulated in front of a crowd, or realistically tour “the VR Museum of Fine Art.” Games like these just aren’t the same were you to play them on, say, an Xbox, because it simply doesn’t have that key factor of feeling like you’re there. In Fallout 4, your heart pounds fast in your chest as you blast away Feral Ghouls and Super Mutants right in front of you. But in reality, you’re just standing in a green room with stupid looking goggles on. Awesome!

There’s another place on campus — the Bolt VR in Edens residence hall — that also has a cutting-edge VR setup going. Mark explained to me that Duke wants people to get experience with VR, as it will soon be a huge part of our lives. Having exposure now could give Duke graduates a very valuable head start in their career (while also making Duke look good). Plus, it’s nice to have on campus for offering students a fun break from all the hard work we put in.

If you’re bummed you missed out, or even if you don’t “love tech,” I recommend checking out the Tech Fair next time — February 13, from 6-8pm. See you there.

Post By Will Sheehan

Will Sheehan

Hearing Loss and Depression Are Connected

By Guest Post

On February 9, 2018

In Behavior/Psychology, Biology, Guest Post, Students

Jessica West is a PhD candidate in sociology.

Jessica West, a PhD student in sociology at Duke, has found that hearing loss creates chronic stress but that high levels of social support – from family, friends and others – can help alleviate depression. Given that hearing loss is a growing social and physical health problem, her study suggests a need for increased vigilance regarding hearing loss among older adults, West said.

Her study was published in the November issue of Social Science & Medicine and is available here.

Here, West discusses her research.

Your research examines the correlation between hearing loss and depression. That seems a logical connection: why study it in the way you did?

Despite how common hearing loss is, it is actually quite understudied. A handful of studies have looked at the relationship between hearing loss and mental health over time, but the results from these studies are mixed: some find a relationship between hearing loss and more depressive symptoms, while others do not. On top of the mixed findings, most studies have been based overseas, and studies based in the U.S. have tended to use state-specific datasets, like the Alameda County Study, which drew from Oakland and Berkeley, CA.

I use the Health and Retirement Study, which is nationally representative of adults aged 50 and older in the U.S., and therefore more generalizable to the U.S. population.

I frame hearing loss as a physical health stressor that can impact mental health, and that social support can alter this relationship by preventing a person from experiencing stress or reducing the severity of a reaction to it. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first paper to link hearing loss to health outcomes in this way.

What might surprise people about your findings?

More than one-fifth of the people in my sample have fair to poor hearing (23.12% or 1,405 people in the first wave). Hearing loss is really common in the U.S.

Also, I found that social support is most beneficial in easing the burden of hearing loss among people with significant hearing loss. Overall, this suggests that hearing loss is a chronic stressor in people’s lives and that responses to this stressor will vary by the level of social resources that people have available to them.

What does ‘social support’ mean in real terms? What can the family and friends do for a person with hearing loss to help them?

For people with hearing loss, it’s important that they feel able to lean on, talk to, and rely on family, friends, spouses or partners, and children. And going a step further, people with hearing loss need to know that these important people in their lives truly understand the struggles they face. What this means is that people with hearing loss can benefit quite a lot from having a network of people that they feel comfortable discussing things with or reaching out to when needed.

Do people with hearing loss have adequate mental health resources or care available to them?

My research shows that social support is really important for people with hearing loss. One suggestion I make in my paper is that audiologic – or hearing — rehabilitation programs could include educational training for significant others, like spouses or friends, to emphasize the importance of supporting people with hearing impairment. Audiologists, primary care physicians, family, and friends are all key resources that could be targeted in such rehabilitation programs.

What is your next project related to hearing loss?

I am currently working on several projects related to hearing loss. In one, I am looking at the relationship between an individual’s hearing loss and his/her spouse’s mental health outcomes. Few population-based studies have examined the relationship between hearing loss and spousal mental health longitudinally, so I hope this study will shed light on the experience of spousal disability within marriages.

Another project I am working on looks at hearing loss from a life course perspective. In other words, I am looking at people who self-reported hearing loss before the age of 16 and seeing how their hearing loss influenced their marriages, academics and careers. A better understanding of how early life hearing loss influences later life outcomes has implications for earlier identification of hearing loss and/or the use of assistive technology to help people remain socially, academically, and economically engaged.

CITATION: West, Jessica S. 2017. “Hearing Impairment, Social Support, and Depressive Symptoms among U.S. Adults: A Test of the Stress Process Paradigm.” Social Science & Medicine 192(Supplement C):94-101.

Read the paper

Guest post by Eric Ferreri, News and Communications

Duke Scholars Bridge Disciplines to Tackle Big Questions

By Kara Manke

On February 6, 2018

In Data, Faculty, Students, Visualization

A visualization showing faculty as dots that are connected by lines

This visualization, created by James Moody and the team at the Duke Network Analysis Center, links faculty from across schools and departments who serve together on Ph.D. committees. An interactive version is available here.

When the next big breakthrough in cancer treatment is announced, no one will ask whether the researchers are pharmacologists, oncologists or cellular biologists – and chances are, the team will represent all three.

In the second annual Scholars@Duke Visualization Challenge, Duke students explored how scholars across campus are drawing from multiple academic disciplines to tackle big research questions.

“I’m often amazed at how gifted Duke faculty are and how they can have expertise in multiple fields, sometimes even fields that don’t seem to overlap,” said Julia Trimmer, Director of Faculty Data Systems and Analysis at Duke.

In last year’s challenge, students dug into Scholars@Duke publication data to explore how Duke researchers collaborate across campus. This year, they were provided with additional data on Ph.D. dissertation committees and asked to focus on how graduate education and scholarship are reaching across departmental boundaries.

“The idea was to see if certain units or disciplines contributed faculty committee members across disciplines or if there’s a lot of discipline ‘overlap.’” Trimmer said.

The winning visualization, created by graduate student Matthew Epland, examines how Ph.D. committees span different fields. In this interactive plot, each marker represents an academic department. The closer together markers are, the more likely it is that a faculty member from one department will serve on the committee of a student in the other department.

Epland says he was intrigued to see the tight-knit community of neuroscience-focused departments that span different schools, including psychology and neuroscience, neurobiology, neurology and psychiatry and behavioral Sciences. Not surprisingly, many of the faculty in these departments are members of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences (DIBS).

Duke schools appear as dots and are connected by lines of different thicknesses

Aghil Abed Zadeh and Varda F. Hagh analyzed publication data to visualize the extent to which faculty at different Duke schools collaborate with one another. The size of each dot represents the number of publications from each school, and thickness of each line represents the number of faculty collaborations between the connected schools.

Sociology Professor James Moody and the team at the Duke Network Analysis Center took a similar approach, creating a network of individual faculty members who are linked by shared students. Faculty who sit on committees in only one field are bunched together, highlighting researchers who bridge different disciplines. The size of each marker represents the extent to which each researcher sits “between” two fields.

The map shows a set of strong ties within the natural sciences and within the humanities, but few links between the two groups. Moody points out that philosophy is a surprising exception to this rule, lying closer to the natural sciences cluster than to the humanities cluster.

“At Duke, the strong emphasis on philosophy of science creates a natural link between philosophy and the natural sciences,” Moody said.

Duke graduate student Aghil Abed Zadeh teamed up with Varda F. Hagh, a student at Arizona State University, to create elegant maps linking schools and departments by shared authorship. The size of each marker represents the number of publications in that school or department, and the thickness of the connecting lines indicate the number of shared authorships.

“It is interesting to see how connected law school and public policy school are. They collaborate with many of the sciences as well, which is a surprising fact,” Zadeh said. “On the other hand, we see Divinity school, one the oldest at Duke, which is isolated and not connected to others at all.”

The teams presented their visualizations Jan. 20 at the Duke Research Computing Symposium.

Post by Kara Manke