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

Students exploring the Innovation Co-Lab

Category: Students Page 40 of 42

Biomedical Engineering Seniors Share Novel Research

By Nonie Arora

Pratt senior Alex Sun hopes to be able to repair cartilage using stem cells.

Alex Sun at BME Reception

The study Sun has been working on in Dr. Farshid Guilak’s laboratory has found that engineered cartilage constructed from a particular type of stem cell integrate well with host cartilage, but not necessarily in a uniform way.

Sun was one of about thirty biomedical engineering students who presented at the department’s graduation with distinction reception on April 26. Other students have been working on exciting projects in optic imaging of tumors, synthetic biology, and deep brain stimulation, among other topics.

Sun’s project focused on how induced pluripotent stem cells can be used to study cartilage regeneration and repair.

Sun said articular cartilage has limited healing potential and contributes to progressively degenerative diseases like osteoarthritis. The best treatments now require major surgery and total joint replacement. But spontaneous cartilage healing does happen in some animals, like fetal lambs and infantile rats. Better understanding these mechanisms for spontaneous repair could allow for their eventual integration into therapy.

Students Converse at BME Graduation with Distinction Reception

Like many of the seniors graduating from BME with distinction, Sun’s research career has just begun. After graduation, he will be headed to the Netherlands to work on a tissue engineering project sponsored by the Whitaker International Fellowship. 

Visible Thinking

By Prachiti Dalvi & Pranali Dalvi

(See our video from this event! It also appears below.)

In every field from humanities, to behavioral sciences, to biological sciences, Duke undergraduates are tackling current research questions, developing new technologies, and proposing new theories on Duke’s campus and around the world!

Approximately 200 students showcased their research findings from summer internships, independent research projects, and field work projects at Visible Thinking, an undergraduate research symposium sponsored by the Duke Undergraduate Research Support Office and the Duke Undergraduate Research Society (DURS). The event was held in the Bryan Center on Wednesday, April 18.

Joshua Weiss (T'14)

Joshua Weiss found his scientific niche in the laboratory of Daniel Wechsler, MD, PhD, while doing a summer research project funded by the Dean’s Summer Research Fellowship the summer after his freshman year. Hoping to eventually attend medical school, Josh was intrigued by a chromosomal change leading to the development of leukemia in children. It’s a translocation that causes increased activity in two genes called Hox a7 and Hox a9. Hox genes play an enormous role in development and are believed to ultimately cause the leukemia. The Wechsler Lab is interested in understanding the molecular basis behind the genetic change with the hope that it could lead to targeted therapies. Josh is looking at a recent discovery of some molecules that inhibit this chain of events to see whether they’d work with chemotherapy.

Senior Stephanie Patterson found a project that combined her interests of public health, pharmacology, and psychology in the lab of Dr. Nicole-Schramm-Saptya, PhD. A chemistry-major with a concentration in pharmacology, Stephanie was interested in understanding how ethanol exposure during adolescence would affect acute impulsivity and chronic impulsivity in rats. Adolescents have immature brain development, especially in regions of the brain associated with impulsivity and decision-making. Exposure to drugs of abuse has been demonstrated to increase impulsivity. Rats were exposed to ethanol at two developmental time points (adolescence and adulthood) and the delay discounting paradigm was used to measure impulsivity.

Charmaine Mutucumarana (T'13)

Charmaine Mutucumarana, a Trinity junior double-majoring in Biology and French, became involved with research in the laboratory of Dr. Marilyn Telen, MD through the Howard Hughes Research Fellows Program. For the past two years, she has been studying the adhesive properties of blood cells. In sickle cell disease, red blood cells become more adhesive and stick to vascular endothelium. Previously, researchers have found elevated levels of laminin, a plasma factor, in sickle cell patients than in non-sickle cell patients.  Charmaine tested whether soluble purified laminin and plasma laminin enhanced the ability of sickle cell red blood cells to adhere to endothelial cells. She hopes to continue working in the Telen lab to see whether laminin levels in plasma correlate with cell adhesion. These findings could lead to a better understanding of the role of laminin in sickle cell disease.

Melanie Sperling (T'14)

Melanie Sperling is a sophomore majoring in Psychology with a minor in Philosophy and a certificate in Children in Contemporary Society. During her freshman year, she received summer funding from the Hart Leadership Program to study the barriers and opportunities for engaging parents in their children’s education in the Boston area. Melanie worked with the BELL Foundation, which provides after-school and summer opportunities for underprivileged children, to understand why some parents are invested in their children’s educations while others are not. After emailing and setting up phone interviews with more than 500 parents, Melanie explored home-to-school and school-to-home communication and how frequently parents engaged in “learning at home,” or assisting students with homework and other curricular activities.

Sperling found that many parents did not perceive the importance of being involved in their child’s education, while others were busy due to work, other  children, and personal relationships. For instance, some parents returned home late after work when their children were already sleeping. Additionally, parents often felt they lacked the technical knowledge to help their kids with homework. There was a general consensus among the parents that school-to-home communication is lacking. Thus, Melanie suggested that the BELL Foundation can improve communication by sending children home with a checklist every day of homework assignments. She also suggested that parents start weekly meetings with other parents to discuss personal struggles and get advice from one another and also increasing the frequency of parent-teacher conferences. By working with the BELL Foundation to implement these leaders, Melanie hopes to launch parents as leaders in their children’s educations.

Tawnee Sparling, a senior in biological anthropology and anatomy, studied the

Tawnee Sparling (T'12)

shoulder of Autralopithecus sediba, a species of hominids dating to 2 million years ago that was discovered from the partial skeletons of a juvenile male (MH1), an adult female (MH2), one other adult, and an 18-month infant. Taking Steven Churchill’s osteology class during her sophomore year piqued Tawnee’s interest in anthropological research. Her passion for research took her to Johannesburg, South Africa where she compared bone collections from other finds to understand the evolution of the human shoulder with funding from the Dean’s Summer Research Fellowship.

Tawnee explained that there is controversy over the evolution of the hominin shoulder. With the advent of bipedalism, the upper limb became used for manipulation rather than climbing trees. Early australopiths had the ancestral condition in which the shoulder blade was positioned high on the thorax, while modern humans exhibit a lower shoulder blade. However, it’s unclear how much australopiths still climbed trees because anthropologists have found both ape-like and Homo-like fossil shoulder blades. To figure out this controversy, Tawnee  compared measurements from modern humans as well as hominin fossils at the University of Witwatersrand. Her measurements of MH2’s shoulder blades revealed that australopiths were probably involved in substantial climbing. After graduation, Tawnee plans to work in an orthopedics biomechanics lab for a year before attending medical school.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biK-gPR8C1U]

Fracking

Source: Marcellus Effect

By Becca Bayham

You may wonder: what the frack is fracking?

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process by which water, sand, and chemical additives are pumped into a well to fracture deep underground formations and allow natural gas to flow to the surface. Fracking has reduced our dependence on foreign oil, decreased carbon emissions and made significant contributions to our nation’s economy. However, the technology can have significant social and environmental impacts, according to Duke professor Avner Vengosh.

Vengosh joined Brooks Rainey Pearson from the Nicholas Institute, David Burnett from Texas A&M’s Global Petroleum Research Institute and Keith McLeroy from Texas’ Engineering Extension Service for an in-depth discussion about fracking, April 9. The event was sponsored by Environmental Alliance and the Drilling, Environment, and Economics Network, two on-campus student groups.

Vengosh described how shale gas drilling and fracking can disturb residents of formerly quiet towns with nearly-constant noise, odor and truck traffic.

“This is changing the dynamics of small towns in Pennsylvania [and other states] pretty significantly,” he said.

Vengosh said that fracking can also impact air and water quality — and thus human health. Earlier this year, he published the first peer-reviewed paper to examine well-water contamination from shale-gas drilling and hydrofracking. He and his colleagues found that drinking water wells within 1 km of a drilling operation were more likely to have high concentrations of methane, the primary component of natural gas.

Fracking is also very water-intensive, requiring millions of gallons of water at drilling each site. In areas experiencing drought conditions, this presents a serious problem, Vengosh said.

Many companies recycle the water they produce. However, the water that flows out differs significantly from water that went in, often containing high levels of salts, heavy metals and naturally-occurring radionuclides that can be difficult to remove. According to Vengosh, some companies bypass that difficulty by discharging their wastewater to nearby rivers or streams.

“It’s not nice, but it’s done,” he said.

According to Pearson, fracking exists within a unique regulatory environment. The technology is exempt from several national environmental policies that regulate hazardous waste disposal and environmental cleanup, among other things. Environmentalists often cite the so-called “Halliburton loophole,” which exempts fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Pearson insists that “these exclusions occurred over time — there’s no one bad guy.”

Many states include fracking under the umbrella of their existing oil and gas regulations, but those regulations aren’t necessarily sufficient, Pearson said.

“States are retroactively seeing the unique regulatory needs of shale gas production, such as the need for baseline water quality data.”

Baseline data — such as air and water quality information — is collected before drilling begins and allows researchers to assess the direct environmental impacts of fracking.

“Without baseline data, it’s very hard for regulatory agencies to say ‘the industry caused this contamination,'” Pearson said.

Burnett discussed efforts to “reach across the aisle between the environmentalists and the oilmen” to develop environmentally-friendly drill programs. The first step is measurement, he said.

“You’ve got to find out what you’re doing wrong, then you’ve got to fix it.”

The panel concluded by emphasizing that, for all its problems, natural gas will help us reduce our reliance on oil and coal and transition to an an era of cleaner energy.

“The effects are there, but you have to see the environmental impacts of the alternatives, which perhaps are worse,” Vengosh said.

TEDxDuke 2012

By Becca Bayham

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

Dasan Ahanu, poet and spoken word performer

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

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

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

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


Patty Kennedy, marketing and communications professional

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Improve science to explain everything, Dawkins says

By Becca Bayham

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Students Discuss Property Rights to Excised Tissue

By: Nonie Arora

While students from Duke, UNC, Wake Forest and UVA enjoyed lunch at the first Duke-UNC Bioethics Symposium, Neby Teklu, a Duke sophomore, spoke on property rights to excised tissue.

The circular relationship between people who contribute and benefit from medical research. Credit: Neby Teklu

According to Teklu, when deciding who owns the property rights, the conflict is between the patient — the source of tissue — and the physician or researcher — the possessor of the tissue. Teklu said she is concerned about whether some profits should be returned to people who serve as the source of cell lines when monetary gains are made from pharmaceutical research.

Teklu referenced the Belmont Report, a 1978 document created by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research to address ethical guidelines for human subjects research. The report stresses respect for patients, beneficence and justice.

Essentially, patient autonomy must be maintained. Patients should not be harmed, while benefits are maximized and harms are minimized, and there must be fair distribution of costs and benefits to research participants.

Still, the question remains whether patients have intellectual property rights over their bodies and should be financially compensated for profits from cell lines. Teklu argued that requiring consent for procedures done with excised tissue would hinder medical research.

Neby Teklu speaks at the Duke-UNC Bioethics Symposium. Courtesy of: Nonie Arora.

In the case of Greenberg v. Miami Children’s Hospital Research Institute, Inc., the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida found that “the research participant’s property right in blood and tissue samples … evaporates once the sample is voluntarily given to a third party.” The Supreme Court upheld this precedent in William Catalona v. Washington University, when they decided that the university, not the researcher nor patients, had rights to the tissue samples. The university could sell, license or use the samples any way it saw fit.

Clearly, there is a trade off between social benefits of science using samples from human subjects and individual patient rights, Teklu explained. She said she believes that medical research depends on the altruism of individuals and that requiring additional measures of consent for use of tissues would be harmful for the progress of medicine.

Other students also presented including Duke Research Blogger Pranali Dalvi and Wake Forest undergraduates Elizabeth Stuart and Muhammad Siddiqui. Topics ranged from health care rationing to post-trial access for expensive medications

Meet Joel Bray, Lemur Enthusiast

 By Nonie Arora 

Joel the Lemur and the rest of the Crazies meet Dick Vitale at the March 3 UNC game. (Duke Photo)

You may have been wondering who the student dressed as a lemur was for the Duke-Carolina game. Meet Joel Bray, lemur enthusiast and Trinity Junior.

Joel works in Brian Hare’s cognitive psychology lab where he does research on the psychology and evolution of nonhuman primates.

“Primates are an amazing way to understand human behavior, and specifically cognition,” Bray says. He studies lemurs at the Duke Lemur Center, which is home to the largest population of lemurs outside of Madagascar. Lemurs, most similar to the last common ancestor of all primates, are interesting because all 100 species are closely related at the genetic level, but they live in very different social and ecological environments.

In his first project, Joel studied inhibitory control in lemurs to understand how cognition evolves. This was part of a larger effort under NESCent, the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. The project sought to compare dozens of species, including primates, birds, and rodents, on the same tasks using the same methods.

Joel tested the lemur’s inhibitory control by presenting them with an opaque cylinder with openings on both ends and food inside. The animals first learned how to retrieve the food. Then, the opaque tube was replaced with a transparent one. The impulse is to reach directly for the food item through the obstructed barrier, but to successfully retrieve the food the lemurs had to inhibit that response and reach from the side. Inhibitory control is considered to be important in both social and foraging contexts, and certain environments are expected to exert more selective pressure for the ability. In human children, it is predictive of future academic and social success.

Joel, out of costume, studies a troop of ringtailed lemurs because he's a method actor. (Courtesy of Joel Bray)

More recently, Joel has investigated social cognition, specifically asking what lemurs understand about the perception of other individuals. Humans display “theory of mind,” the notion that other individuals have perceptions, knowledge, and beliefs different from one’s own. While lemurs are unlikely to have a complex understanding of the minds of other individuals, they may display more basic abilities.

In his current project, Joel is asking whether lemurs will take advantage of information about a human competitor’s visual perspective to acquire food. One food item is visible to the experimenter and the other is not, and the lemur must decide which to approach. It is expected that that species in large or complex social groups will perform better because their evolutionary history has selected for being able to understand what other individuals can perceive (i.e. “social intelligence”).

Ultimately, this research may lead to a better understanding of human cognition and whether our “big brains” evolved because of complex social environments.

New Blogger Ashley: Welcome to blogging

Meet Ashley Mooney, or Ashe as my friends call me.  I am a coffee addict who loves her animals.

Me and Misty at the Grand Canyon.

I’m a sophomore majoring in evolutionary anthropology and receiving a certificate in policy journalism and media studies. I’m from Portland, Oregon—the home of coffee and rain. After school, I’m hoping to attend either medical or veterinary school.

Besides writing for the research blog, I write for the Chronicle. Although it may be a bit of a conflict of interest, I love science writing in general. I can also be found swimming and feasting.

One of my favorite things in the world is delectable food.  Pumpkin, chocolate, and cheese are my ultimate flavors. So far, I have eaten at all but two grub spots on campus—the Nasher and Starbucks (in the Medical Center).  I hope to change that by the end of this year, as well as dabbling in Durham’s dining options.

I have a standard poodle, Misty, and a blue parakeet, Archie.  Archie currently lives here with me at Duke in a super secret location. My goal is to own a macaw as soon as possible after graduation.

New Blogger Nonie: Joining the Team

By Nonie Arora

Hello there,

This is Nonie Arora, a freshman A.B. Duke Scholar from Novi, MI. I am excited to join the Duke Research Blog team.

I’ve been involved in research since my freshman year of high school. Back then, I was obsessed with the concept of “superbugs” and antibacterial resistance. I ordered E. coli out of a catalog with my chemistry teacher and tested its resistance to common household substances, like soap and bleach. My research interests evolved as I started working in a lab at the Wayne State University Medical School. For three years, I studied genes in a yeast, C. albicans, that contribute to antifungal drug resistance.

My research took me to different science fairs, such as the International Science & Engineering Fair (ISEF) and the Intel Science Talent Search. At ISEF, being in a hall with 1500 other students from around the world – who were all enthusiastic about research – was incredibly motivating. I was eager for more research exposure. The wide variety of research present at Duke, from basic science to behavioral economics to clinical trials, is incredible. Being able to interact with renowned faculty as a freshman is a privilege.

Last semester, I was part of the Genomics FOCUS program and took classes with Hunt Willard and Bob Cook-Deegan. The captivating teaching styles of my professors coupled with a better understanding of how science affects society increased my passion for genomics. This semester, I am working in the Kontos lab studying protein interactions that may explain how endothelial cells maintain a resting state, which is relevant to cardiovascular disease.

Outside of research, I like to run, read the New York Times, and devour law thrillers. When I have the time, I indulge in watching The Big Bang Theory, House, and the Good Wife. At home, I enjoy spending time with my parents and my 11-year old sister. It’s probably easier to answer some of the questions that my professors propose than the ones she does!

I look forward to contributing my perspective on research at Duke.

Physicist's thesis now 'famous'

By Ashley Yeager

physicist Ashutosh Kotwal

Physicist Ashutosh Kotwal's thesis paper is now famous in the high-energy physics field. Image courtesy of Ashutosh Kotwal.

Physicist Ashutosh Kotwal spent his days in graduate school making particles scatter. Little did he know that his 1996 thesis on protons, deuterons and muons would become famous.

Kotwal, now a full professor at Duke, recently learned from a former mentor, Northwestern physicist Heidi Schellman,that his Ph.D thesis earned “famous paper” distinction in his field of high-energy physics. The honor is based on the number of times other researchers have mentioned the work in the scientific literature. Schellman had been the leader for Kotwal’s thesis research collaboration.

The high-energy physics community has maintained its own database of publications and citations at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center since the 1980s. Kotwal’s thesis paper has 252 citations, to date.

His paper is now ranked number 99 among experimental high-energy physics famous papers from the last 15 years.

According to the stats, Kotwal is also co-author on five other “famous” papers and two “renowned” articles, which each have more than 500 citations. Kotwal said he hopes his thesis paper’s distinction “can provide some inspiration” for students interested in physics research.

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