In the early 20th century, a transformative movement quietly took root in America’s rural South, shaping the educational and economic future of African American families.
This movement centered around the Rosenwald Schools, modest one-, two-, and three-teacher buildings that exclusively served over 700,000 Black children between 1917 and 1932.
A historical marker along NC 32 south near Luke Street in Edenton commemorates the first Rosenwald School in North Carolina. Credit: NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources
These nearly 5,000 rural schoolhouses emerged from an unexpected collaboration between two visionaries: Booker T. Washington, an influential educator and African American thought leader, and Julius Rosenwald, a German-Jewish immigrant who amassed wealth as the head of Sears, Roebuck & Company.
In 1912, Rosenwald donated $25,000 to aid Black colleges and preparatory academies. Washington proposed using a portion of these funds to build rural elementary schools in Black communities.
Project lead Alec Greenwald and students discuss their efforts to map a 20th century educational experiment across the Black Belt region of North Carolina. Video by Wil Weldon.
Over the next two decades, Rosenwald Schools sprouted across the South. The Rosenwald program significantly boosted literacy rates and school attendance among rural Southern Blacks. Students who attended these schools received a better education, leading to increased years of schooling.
The Rosenwald program trained a generation of future civil rights leaders, including Maya Angelou, Medgar Evers, John Lewis, and members of the Little Rock Nine.
Exploring the legacy of Kala Bagai, an early Indian woman in America
Every evening after wrapping up his archival research at the University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. candidate Arko Dasgupta would stroll into downtown Berkeley. Just one block away from the university, he would pause at “Kala Bagai Way,” a street name that always sparked his interest.
“Kala Bagai Way” in Berkeley, California. Credit: Arko Dasgupta
Standing there, he often found himself lost in thought, wondering: Why do I know so little about Kala Bagai? What was her story? Why was this street in Berkeley named after her?
Dasgupta, a Doctoral Scholar with Duke’s Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, already had research interests in early Indian migration in the United States, so he decided to investigate.
In exploring her life, Dasgupta’s goal has been clear: to bring Kala Bagai’s story to light in both India and the United States. “I hope readers come to appreciate the complexities that immigrants wishing to start life in the United States encountered in the last century and still today,” he says.
Upon his initial investigation, Dasgupta learned that in September 2020 the Berkeley City Council renamed the street in honor of Kala Bagai, one of the first Indian women to immigrate to the United States.
This recognition came from the very town that, over a 100 years earlier, had greeted her and her family with cruelty and hostility.
Dasgupta was fascinated. This topic became the focus of his recent article published the India International Centre Quarterly. “I wanted to dig deeper into the life of Kala Bagai who arrived in this country at a time when there were hardly any women from India here”, he says.
Kala Bagai with her husband Vaishno Das Bagai and their three children. Photo courtesy of Rani Bagai and the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)
Kala Bagai arrived in the U.S. in 1915, a time when Indian women were rare in America. Her husband, Vaishno Das Bagai, was involved in the Ghadar Movement, which sought to challenge British colonial rule from its base in the United States. Despite their financial comfort, the Bagai family faced significant racism in their new setting, exemplified by their rejection when trying to settle in Berkeley.
When they purchased a home in Berkeley, California, their new neighbors locked them out of their house and prevented them from moving in.
“The Bagais, unlike their neighbors, were not White” Dasgupta says.
In 1923, two years after Vaishno Das Bagai had become a U.S. citizen, the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind stripped him of his citizenship, ruling that Indians were not “white” and therefore ineligible for citizenship. Five years later, crushed by the injustice and having had to forego their assets, Vaishno Das took his own life.
Photo of Kala Bagai courtesy of Rani Bagai and the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)
“Being a single mother to three children under these circumstances in a country that could be unwelcoming to people of her racial background was doubtlessly challenging,” Dasgupta says.
After losing her husband, Kala Bagai faced the challenges of single motherhood in San Francisco head-on. Determined not to be defeated, she enrolled in night school to learn English and, with the help of a banker, wisely invested her late husband’s life insurance in stocks, securing her family’s financial future.
Kala’s strength and resilience shaped her path forward. She became a philanthropist and joined the American Wives of India, fostering cultural connections. Her son, Ram, became a key figure in the Indian American community, even supporting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Civil Rights Movement.
In the 1950s, after the Luce-Celler Act granted U.S. citizenship to Indians, Kala purchased property in Los Angeles. Her home became a welcoming haven for South Asian students from UCLA, where her hospitality and warmth made her beloved in the community.
“She enjoyed hosting, feeding, and taking care of people!” Dasgupta says, highlighting her deep commitment to nurturing those around her.
Kala became a pillar of the South Asian community in Southern California, earning the affectionate title of Jhaiji, or grandmother, and was widely recognized as a founding member of the Indian community there.
Her legacy, rooted in resilience, endures in the lasting impact she made by promoting cultural understanding and inspiring others to uplift and connect with their communities. Her unwavering commitment to these values continues to influence and empower those who follow in her footsteps.
“This story is worth telling because it enriches the larger story of early immigrants from the Indian subcontinent, particularly in a field that is mainly populated by the stories of men” Dasgupta says.
You can read Dasgupta’s full piece in the Summer 2024 issue of IIC Quarterly.
Editors Note:I want to tell you a story about voter suppression and political chaos on the eve of a national election. My country, Pakistan, has some unfortunate first-hand experience in what might happen if your leaders abandon the Constitution.
On May 9, 2023, I had just finished my Pakistani A-levels, and was preparing to give my final examinations (Cambridge Board). Unfortunately, it wasn’t just a routine day of losing myself into a thick – boring – textbook. My phone blew up with every news outlet I subscribed to sending ‘breaking news’ notifications: 90 people had barged into the Islamabad High Court to arrest former Prime Minister Imran Khan on charges of corruption with the Al Qadir trust. He had been accused of illegally selling state gifts.
This sensationalized arrest was no surprise, Khan, who had been removed from office by a no confidence vote in 2022, had been criticizing the military of Pakistan for months. This was the first time this had ever happened, but no one was surprised. After all, we have never had a Prime Minister complete a five-year term since 1947.
Even though the public had seen it coming, they weren’t going to remain silent; violent protests broke out everywhere. I was at my friend’s house at the time. We heard something was going on but didn’t make much of it. Protests are normal.
We were wrong. The public was outraged by Khan’s arrest, and their reaction matched that anger.
I didn’t know all the facts to make up a strong opinion. Honestly, no one did. We just knew that we had to fight for Khan – the evidence behind his charges weren’t strong and his arrest seemed illegal. (It was, the Supreme Court recently ruled.) The arrest felt planned by the military and the PMLN (Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz – a dynastic political party run by Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif, one of the richest men in Pakistan).
I remember returning from my friend’s house during a media and electricity blackout. We were minutes away from the protest happening in my city, Lahore. With no uber or signals on our phones, we took a Rickshaw (open-air taxi) to get closer. Little did I know I would be witnessing the protest first-hand; it quickly turned violent. As chaos erupted around me, I sat in the rickshaw, covering my face, praying for my dear life while people mere feet away from me were wielding sticks, breaking cars and windows. They were angry at the system and this was their way of vocalizing it.
I was so shaken by the experience that I didn’t leave my house for weeks after. But I was also constricted by choice. The protests spiraled into brutality.
Protesters stormed the General Headquarters of the Pakistan Army in Rawalpindi and torched the corps commander’s residence in Lahore. They also attempted to vandalize the ISI headquarters. In retaliation, the army resorted to using firearms to scatter the demonstrators, further intensifying the unrest.
I recall discussing this with my mother: were the protestors wrong? The governance of the country had failed them – it had imposed unlawful methods to arrest not only Imran Khan, but over 105 workers of PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf), the party he led.
Perhaps the truth is that there is no right or wrong answer to this question. From a democratic perspective, the people wanted Khan to lead them. And from a legal standpoint, his arrest was illegal. But the violence in the protests seemed rather extreme.
On the other hand, if it wasn’t extreme, would they even be noticed?
Ultimately, all these questions amounted to nothing: PTI workers were leaving the party or getting arrested with over 3,100 protestors country-wide. Essentially, demolishing the political party. The military was not going to tolerate unrest, and their actions were a testament to that. The protests stopped, by force, not choice.
A few months later, the Election Commission of Pakistan set a date for elections on February 8, 2024.
Imran Khan? Still in jail. PTI workers? Still in jail.
Who would stand for elections? PTI party members as independents, and of course, PMLN and PPP (Pakistan People’s Party – another dynastic political party – led by Bilalwal Bhutto).
I was lucky enough to leave Duke for a week to visit Pakistan during this time. Voting has always been important to me, so I wasn’t going to waste that right (just as Americans should vote on November 5th!).
From what I witnessed, Punjab (the province I live in) was largely in favor of Khan and supported the PTI independents, and the opinion polls proved that. The elections, however, didn’t go as planned. Allegedly, the elections were rigged by the PMLN and the army.
I thought so too. Casting a vote was hard. There was a media blackout and the voting process was way more complicated than it needed to be. In Pakistan, you vote by stamping a symbol of a political party on your ballot. Most people rely on symbols rather than the name written next to it. The famous cricket bat symbol long associated with PTI was instead being used by PMLN members. It seemed like an attempt to baffle the public. A vote for the bat symbol was no longer a vote for PTI.
The Pakistani ballot uses symbols for each party. You vote by stamping a symbol. This year, the cricket bat changed parties, probably to create confusion.
When I went to vote, there were tents outside the building: hundreds of people were attempting to educate the public on the meaning of the symbols. They gave out a pamphlet explaining in detail who you should vote for, given who you support. This was a sight I had never witnessed. People weren’t spreading awareness on the significance of voting, they were spreading awareness on the logistics of voting. It was that complicated.
Election results were supposed to come out 24 hours after polling had stopped, but they were delayed for more than 48 hours. Many of the voting numbers didn’t add up while, in my house, we had the news on constantly that week. First, the independents were winning. Suddenly, the votes for PMLN skyrocketed overnight. We already had an inkling of the impossibility of PTI’s win, despite the overwhelming sentiment of the public. The initial nation-wide celebrations took a sharp turn.
A part of us already knew the outcome, but the feeling of defeat still lingered. The PTI independents had lost in Punjab. A coalition government between PMLN and PPP was officially in office. The rest is history.
This is a story that began two years ago and still remains unresolved. Imran Khan is still behind bars, and people are left disillusioned. Something has felt ‘off’ from the start, and it continues to feel that way. Yet, despite the uncertainty, we find ourselves unable to act. Protesting leads to arrests, and questioning the system is seen as defiance.
My love for Pakistan runs deep. It’s not just the corrupt system or the unanswered questions that frustrate me—it’s the silencing of a nation that, at its core, is full of resilient, passionate people. Pakistanis are fighters. We’ve always stood up for what we believe in. What we need now is the freedom to express that belief without fear.
Until then, the fight continues in Pakistan, in whatever form it can take.
Democracy isn’t just a word, it’s an action, a responsibility. When the people’s voice is stifled, when powerful figures twist the law for their gain, it’s not just the system that crumbles—it’s the spirit of a nation. Don’t take your freedoms for granted, because once they’re stripped away, it’s a long, painful battle to win them back. So, let’s fight for our future on November 5th!
New maps of Durham released by students in Duke’s Data+ research program show the Bull City as a patchwork of red, white and pink. But what looks like a haphazardly assembled quilt is actually a picture of the socioeconomic realities facing Durham’s 32,000-plus public school students.
The color patches represent the home values across Durham, showing roughly where more and less affluent students live. The darker the red, the higher-priced their housing.
Like cities and neighborhoods, schools face economic disparities too. Research shows that school segregation by race and class in North Carolina has gotten steadily worse over the last three decades.
A 2024 study by North Carolina State University revealed that the typical low-income student attends schools where more than 70% of their classmates are low-income too — a trend that worsens the achievement gap between the richest and poorest children.
A new student assignment plan that Durham Public Schools is rolling out this year aims to combat that trend by redrawing district boundary lines — the thick black lines on the map — to make schools more diverse and equitable.
But if schools are to tackle economic segregation, they’ll need accurate ways to measure it as Durham continues to grow and change.
As kids across Durham head back to class, some 1500 elementary school students are changing schools this year under the Durham Public Schools Growing Together plan, which aims to increase equity and access across schools.
That was the challenge facing a team in Duke’s Data+ program this summer. For 10 weeks, Duke students Alex Barroso and Dhaval Potdar collaborated with school planners at Durham Public Schools to look at how family wealth and poverty are distributed across the school system.
“Socioeconomic status is a complicated thing,” said Barroso, a Duke junior majoring in statistical science.
For years, the standard way to identify children in need was using free and reduced-price lunch statistics from the National School Lunch Program, along with published income data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
But those numbers can be unreliable, Barroso said.
Changing state and federal policies mean that more districts — including Durham Public Schools — are providing free meals to all students, regardless of their family income. But as a result, schools no longer have an exact count of how many students qualify.
And Census estimates are based on geographic boundaries that can mask important variation in the data when we look more closely.
At a symposium in Gross Hall in July, Barroso pointed to several dark red patches (i.e., more expensive housing) bordering white ones (i.e., more affordable) on one of the team’s maps.
In some parts of the city, homes worth upwards of a million dollars abut modest apartments worth a fraction of that, “which can skew the data,” he said.
The problem with Census estimates “is that everyone who lives in that area is reported as having the same average income,” said team lead Vitaly Radsky, a PhD student at UNC’s School of Education and school planner with Durham Public Schools.
So they took a different approach: using homes as a proxy for socioeconomic status.
Research has confirmed that students from higher-value homes perform better in school as measured by standardized math tests.
The team created a custom script that fetches publicly available data on every home in Durham from sources such as Durham Open Data and the Census, and then automatically exports it to a dashboard that shows the data on a map.
“Every single house is accounted for within this project,” Barroso said.
They ran into challenges. For example, Census data are tied to tracts that don’t necessarily align with the district boundaries used by schools, said Dhaval Potdar, a graduate student in Duke’s Master in Interdisciplinary Data Science.
One takeaway from their analysis, Potdar said, is no one yardstick sums up the economic well-being of every student.
In Durham, the typical public school student lives in a home valued at about $300,000.
But the picture varies widely when you zoom in on different geographic scales and footprints.
It’s also a different story if you account for the significant fraction of Durham families who live among neighbors in a larger building such as an apartment, townhouse or condominium, instead of a single-family home.
Considering a home’s age can change the picture too.
Generally speaking, students who live in more expensive homes come from more affluent families. But in many parts of the U.S., home prices have far outpaced paychecks. That means a home that has soared in value in the years since it was purchased may not reflect a family’s true economic situation today, particularly if their income remained flat.
The team’s data visualizations aim to let school planners look at all those factors.
There are still issues to be ironed out. For example, there’s some work to be done before planners can make apples-to-apples comparisons between a student whose family owns their home versus renting a similar property, Barroso said.
“No data source is perfect,” but the research offers another way of anticipating the shifting needs of Durham students, Radsky said.
“The traditional metrics really aren’t getting at the granular fabric of the Durham community,” said Mathew Palmer, the district’s senior executive director of school planning and operational services.
Research like this helps address questions like, “are we putting our resources where the kids need them the most? And are schools equitable?”
“This analysis gives schools more tools moving forward,” Palmer said.
Maggie Heraty, Senior Program Coordinator for the Duke Forest, shows students how to identify little heartleaf (Hexastylis minor) during a Duke Spring Breakthrough program in 2024. Photo credit Bill Snead, Duke University Communications.
For a few lucky people at Duke, a typical work day might include a walk in the woods. Take Maggie Heraty of the Duke Forest, for instance.
What is your job position?
As senior program coordinator for the Duke Forest, Heraty is involved in many projects. She manages two volunteer programs: the Herpetofauna Community Science Program, which collects data on reptile and amphibian populations, and the Forest Stewards Program, which divides volunteers into small teams to “monitor for the effects of recreation in the Duke Forest.”
Heraty is also involved with community engagement and leading tours, such as the annual tour of the Shepherd Nature Trail — which she describes as “one of our ‘core’ tour offerings” — along with a few other themed tours focused on flora and fauna, for instance, or a research tour about ongoing studies occurring in the Duke Forest. “Essentially,” Heraty says, “every season of the year we try to lead one tour… that’s just a free and open to the public tour.”
She also leads field trips or tours by request, such as for middle school programs, specific college classes, or Duke orientation groups.
What is your job like?
“Two weeks never look the same,” Heraty says. This week, she spent Monday and Tuesday wrapping up a Data+ project she’d been involved with this summer. Data+ is an interdisciplinary summer research program for undergraduate and graduate students. On Wednesday Heraty had a staff meeting and a meeting with the Nasher Museum of Art. The Duke Forest and the Nasher are planning a collaborative event focused on the Anthropocene to coincide with an upcoming exhibit at the Nasher called Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocene. Later in the week Heraty would be reviewing reports from Forest Steward volunteers, and if time allowed, she would spend rest the of the week either quality controlling data from the herpetology project, helping update the strategic plan for the Duke Forest, or completing tasks for coordinating the Forest’s deer herd reduction program.
What is the deer herd reduction program?
Every year, from September to December, the Duke Forest partners with a select group of skilled hunters to reduce its overabundant white-tailed deer population. Historically, predators like mountain lions, black bears, and wolves kept the deer population in check, but “Humans have killed off all of the top predators in our ecosystem.”
“We now have coyotes who are making their way into this area and are kind of filling that niche a little bit,” Heraty says, but not enough to control an exploding deer population. The hunting program is a way to reduce it to healthier levels in the absence of natural predators.
Disease spreads more rapidly when the density of an animal population is too high, and the resources in an environment can only sustain a certain number of deer. Maintaining a more balanced deer population also supports plant diversity in the forest since having too many deer can decimate plants and slow forest regeneration.
What is the Duke Forest for?
The Duke Forest consists of 7100 acres in Durham, Orange, and Alamance Counties. It is managed by a staff of nine people, often along with a student intern or assistant. “We have a small, very dedicated team,” Heraty says.
The Forest was founded in 1931 and “has always been intricately linked with the university itself.” The primary mission of the Duke Forest is as a teaching and research laboratory in a “natural environment that is conserved and managed sustainably and that people can study.” Recreation and conservation are an “ancillary benefit,” but the Duke Forest is “not like your average state park or land conservancy.” Teaching and research are at the forefront of what the Duke Forest is for.
Researchers conduct many studies in the Duke Forest. Studies can be scientific, such as evaluating impacts of climate change or humans on the forest, but there are also studies on history, art, and engineering.
Heraty with the 2024 Duke Forest Herpetofauna Data+ team, showing off their project work. (Data+ teammates from left to right: postdoctoral research associate Sarah Roberts, PhD student Caroline Rowley, undergraduate student Harssh Golechha, Professor Nicki Cagle, and graduate student Qianyu Zhu). Photo credit Duke Forest staff; caption provided by Heraty.
How can people use the Duke Forest responsibly?
Balancing recreational use with the other missions can present challenges. The Forest Stewards volunteer program that Heraty oversees was created to help understand and address those issues. “The impetus for [the Forest Stewards program] was in the pandemic,” Heraty says, when people tended to “flock to outdoor spaces to get… a respite from quarantine.” That created a “huge uptick” in recreational use of the Duke Forest, which can have detrimental effects on land and ecosystems. The Forest Stewards act as “ambassadors” for the Forest and serve as “more eyes on the ground,” helping to notice and report issues like fallen signs or unauthorized trails.
Heraty says some of those unauthorized trails are established when people unknowingly follow incorrect directions on a hiking app. More people have started using apps like AllTrails and Strava, which can help people find and navigate new trails but can also lead to problems if someone follows an unauthorized trail while using the apps. Other users of the same app can then follow the same route.
To use the forest responsibly and avoid unauthorized trails or sensitive research sites, Heraty encourages visitors to refer to official websites and maps, which can both help you avoid getting lost and offer resources that “allow you to build more of a connection to the place that you’re visiting.” She suggests a free app called Avenza that lets you upload official Duke Forest maps ahead of time.
How does the Duke Forest balance the impacts of recreation with its other missions?
The Duke Forest encourages sustainable recreation while prioritizing research and conservation. “There’s always something intense happening in the world, and so going outside can be a respite for people, but also—sometimes there is a consumer mindset that happens there, where it’s just like, ‘I need to get in and get out… and never think about it again,’” Heraty says. “A culture that we’re interested in… instilling… is one where we all feel an actual connection to the land we’re living on.”
“Especially in our urbanizing and developing world… it’s really special that this place is preserved,” Heraty adds, and “engaging people in that stewardship mission is important.”
Heraty leads orientation training for Herpetofauna of the Duke Forest community scientist volunteers. Photo credit Duke Forest staff.
What is your favorite thing about the forest, or something that might surprise us?
“The things I’m constantly amazed by in my job are really when I get to interact with teachers or researchers,” Heraty says. There are “so many brilliant people who are learning and thinking about the land or the forest.” One study that’s happened since Heraty joined the Duke Forest staff in 2021 was a UNC archaeological dig along New Hope Creek studying indigenous life. You can learn more about this research project in this article or this video.
Heraty also enjoys education and outreach, especially outside in the forest itself. Part of her background is in on-the-ground conservation stewardship, so “whenever I do get to actually be in the woods in Duke Forest, that is one of my favorite parts.” She enjoys helping to “interpret what people are seeing,” like explaining that a piece of flagging tape represents a research study or showing someone how to identify a tree.
What do you do for fun outside of work?
“I love reading sci-fi and fantasy,” Heraty says. Right now she’s reading a book called “Black Sun” by Rebecca Roanhorse, which a friend recommended. She is also involved with grassroots organizing for social justice groups and enjoys indoor rock-climbing.
It sounds fantastical, but it’s a reality for the scientists who work at the world’s largest particle collider:
In an underground tunnel some 350 feet beneath the France–Switzerland border, a huge device called the Large Hadron Collider sends beams of protons smashing into each other at nearly the speed of light, creating tiny eruptions that mimic the conditions that existed immediately after the Big Bang.
Scientists like Duke physicist Ashutosh Kotwal think the subatomic debris of these collisions could contain hints of the universe’s “missing matter.” And with some help from artificial intelligence, Kotwal hopes to catch these fleeting clues on camera.
A view inside the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Akin to a giant digital camera, physicists hope to use the detector in the quest to find dark matter, the mysterious stuff that fills the universe but no one has ever seen it. Credit: CERN.
Ordinary matter — the stuff of people and planets — is only part of what’s out there. Kotwal and others are hunting for dark matter, an invisible matter that’s five times more abundant than the stuff we can see but whose nature remains a mystery.
Scientists know it exists from its gravitational influence on stars and galaxies, but other than that we don’t know much about it.
The Large Hadron Collider could change that. There, researchers are looking for dark matter and other mysteries using detectors that act like giant 3D digital cameras, taking continuous snapshots of the spray of particles produced by each proton-proton collision.
Only ordinary particles trigger a detector’s sensors. If researchers can make dark matter at the LHC, scientists think one way it could be noticeable is as a sort of disappearing act: heavy charged particles that travel a certain distance — 10 inches or so — from the point of collision and then decay invisibly into dark matter particles without leaving a trace.
If you retraced the paths of these particles, they would leave a telltale “disappearing track” that vanishes partway through the detector’s inner layers.
When beams collide at the Large Hadron Collider, they split into thousands of smaller particles that fly out in all directions before vanishing. Scientists think some of those particles could make up dark matter, and Duke physicist Ashutosh Kotwal is using AI and image recognition to help in the hunt. Credit: Pcharito.
But to spot these elusive tracks they’ll need to act fast, Kotwal says.
That’s because the LHC’s detectors take some 40 million snapshots of flying particles every second.
That’s too much raw data to hang on to everything and most of it isn’t very interesting. Kotwal is looking for a needle in a haystack.
“Most of these images don’t have the special signatures we’re looking for,” Kotwal said. “Maybe one in a million is one that we want to save.”
Researchers have just a few millionths of a second to determine if a particular collision is of interest and store it for later analysis.
“To do that in real time, and for months on end, would require an image recognition technique that can run at least 100 times faster than anything particle physicists have ever been able to do,” Kotwal said.
Kotwal thinks he may have a solution. He has been developing something called a “track trigger,” a fast algorithm that is able to spot and flag these fleeting tracks before the next collision occurs, and from among a cloud of tens of thousands of other data points measured at the same time.
Ashutosh Kotwal is the Fritz London Distinguished Professor of Physics at Duke University.
His design works by divvying up the task of analyzing each image among a large number of AI engines running simultaneously, built directly onto a silicon chip. The method processes an image in less than 250 nanoseconds, automatically weeding out the uninteresting ones.
Kotwal first described the approach in a sequence of two papers published in 2020 and 2021. In a more recent paper published this May in Scientific Reports, he and a team of undergraduate student co-authors show that his algorithm can run on a silicon chip.
Kotwal and his students plan to build a prototype of their device by next summer, though it will be another three or four years before the full device — which will consist of about 2000 chips — can be installed at detectors at the LHC.
As the performance of the accelerator continues to crank up, it will produce even more particles. And Kotwal’s device could help make sure that, if dark matter is hiding among them, scientists won’t miss it.
“Our job is to ensure that if dark matter production is happening, then our technology is up to snuff to catch it in the act,” Kotwal said.
Standing out in a crowd of competitors is no easy task. But one Duke team has done just that — in math.
The Blue Devils were the only U.S.-based team to claim a top 25 finish at the 40th annual Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM), beating out more than 18,500 other teams from 20 countries.
Blue Devils Brandon Lu, Benny Sun and Chris Kan (L to R) finished in the top 25 out of 18,525 teams in an international math contest called Mathematical Contest in Modeling.
The team consisted of undergraduates Christopher Kan, Benny Sun, and Brandon Lu. Their task: to solve a real-world problem using mathematical modeling within 96 hours.
This year’s contestants tackled problems ranging from analyzing what gives tennis players an edge at Wimbledon, to optimizing search and rescue operations for missing submersibles.
The Duke team tackled a challenge that has vexed the fishing industry in the Great Lakes: predicting the impact of an invasive parasitic fish called the sea lamprey that can wreak havoc on native fish.
By adapting existing models from biology and biochemistry to model the sea lamprey population, the students were able to determine how to best apply treatments to rid streams of these parasites.
Two sea lampreys chewing their way into the flesh of a native lake trout of the Great Lakes. (Great Lakes Fisheries Commission)
The contest “is much more open-ended and creatively-focused than most STEM classes,” said Sun, a mathematics and computer science double major at Duke.
The participants try out different approaches to modeling the problems, and there is no one correct answer.
Sun, Kan and Lu also received the Mathematical Association of America Award for their paper. “They did a great job,” said team advisor Veronica Ciocanel, an assistant professor of math and biology who also co-organizes a local version of the contest each fall, called the Triangle Competition in Math Modeling.
In these contests, creativity, time management and writing skills are just as important as cramming on concepts.
“We realized that communication was as important as the findings themselves,” Sun said. “We spent the last two days primarily focused on writing a good paper.”
Having fun as a team is important too, Sun said. “Team chemistry can be an especially important factor in success when you are all locked in the same room for the weekend.”
From tiny flies, Duke researchers are finding new clues to how the brain sets up its circuitry.
In her time at Duke, Khanh Vien figures she’s dissected close to 10,000 fly brains. For her PhD she spent up to eight hours each day peering at baby flies under the microscope, teasing out tiny brains a fraction the size of a poppy seed.
“I find it very meditative,” she said.
Vien acknowledges that, to most people, fruit flies are little more than a kitchen nuisance; something to swat away. But to researchers like her, they hold clues to how animal brains — including our own — are built.
While the human brain has some 86 billion neurons, a baby fruit fly’s brain has a mere 3016 — making it millions of times simpler. Those neurons talk to each other via long wire-like extensions, called axons, that relay electrical and chemical signals from one cell to the next.
Vien and other researchers in Professor Pelin Volkan’s lab at Duke are interested in how that wiring gets established during the fly’s development.
By analyzing a subset of neurons responsible for the fly’s sense of smell, the researchers have identified a protein that helps ensure that new neurons extend their axons to the correct spots in the olfactory area of the young fly’s brain and not elsewhere.
Because the same protein is found across the animal kingdom, including humans, the researchers say the work could ultimately shed light on what goes awry within the brains of people living with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses.
Their findings are published in the journal iScience.
Khanh Vien earned her PhD in developmental and stem cell biology in Professor Pelin Volkan’s lab at Duke.
You are looking at a field of fluffy, golden grass dotted with yellow flowers. There are trees in the background and mountains beyond that. Where are you?
Now you’re facing a terracotta sarcophagus. Where are you? When are you?
A new exhibit in the Rubenstein Arts Center uses AI to bring viewers into ancient Roman and Etruscan landscapes spanning 1300 years, from about 1000 BCE to 300 CE. (The field is Roman, the sarcophagus Etruscan.)
An AI-generated image of a summer meadow near Vulci (Viterbo, Italy). Preserved pollen evidence has revealed which plant species dominated these landscapes, and the prompts used to generate images like this one include lists of plant species.
Along one wall, screens show springtime landscapes representing ancient Rome. The written prompts AI used to create each image include detailed information on plant species found in each landscape. One titled “Sedges in shallow water of an ephemeral pond” mentions “sparse trees of alder (Alnus glutinosa), white willow (Salix alba), and white poplar (Populus alba), and few herbaceous plants.” You can view examples of the written prompts on the exhibit’s website, AI Landscapes – Rethinking the Past.
Models of pollen grains from different plant species. Real pollen grains are microscopic, but these magnified representations help show how different their shapes can be.
Historians know what plants were likely to be in these landscapes because of evidence from preserved pollen grains. Different species have distinct pollen shapes, which makes it possible to identify plants even centuries or millennia later.
Part of the exhibit uses AI and a camera to turn interactive prompts into ancient Roman scenes.
An interactive display near the front of the room has a camera pointed at props like building models, pillars, toy horses, and pieces of styrofoam. An AI model reinterprets the camera’s images to create hypothetical scenes from ancient Rome. “See how the columns get reinterpreted as statues?” says Felipe Infante de Castro, who helped program the AI. The AI attempts to add detail and backgrounds to simple props to create realistic scenes. “The only thing that we’re forcing,” he says, “are essentially shapes—which it may or may not respect.” It may reinterpret a hand as a horse’s head, for instance, or a strangely shaped building.
The model is more precise with plants than buildings, says Augustus Wendell, Assistant Professor of the Practice in Art, Art History and Visual Studies and one of the exhibit designers. Latin names for plants are widely used in modern taxonomy, and the AI is likely to have encountered more plants in its training than ancient Roman architecture styles. The AI is a “generic model” asked to “draw on its presuppositions” about Roman buildings, says Felipe. It “wasn’t trained on specifically Roman landscapes…. It just tries its best to interpret it as such.” The results aren’t always completely authentic. “In the background,” Wendell says, “the city is often quite modern Tuscan, not at all ancient Roman.”
It’s interesting to see how the AI responds when you place unfamiliar objects in front of the camera, like your hand. Here, it tried to turn my hand into some sort of building.
“We can use an AI,” Felipe says, “to give us a representation of the past that is compatible with what we believe the past should look like.”
In another part of the exhibit, you can use an AI chatbot to talk to Pliny the Elder, a Roman scholar. Caitlin Childers, who helped design the exhibit, explains that the chatbot was trained on Pliny the Elder’s 37 books on natural history. When I asked Pliny what the chatbot was designed for, he told me, “I do not have the ability to access external articles or specific information beyond the knowledge I possess as Pliny the Elder up to the year 79 AD.”
He can give you information on plants and their uses in ancient Rome, but when I asked Pliny what his favorite plant was, he couldn’t decide. “I find it challenging to select a favorite plant among the vast array of flora that the Earth provides. Each plant contributes uniquely to the balance and beauty of nature.” According to Professor Maurizio Forte, “This AI chatbot can speak in English, French, Italian and also in Latin! So it is possible to formulate questions in Latin and requiring a response in Latin or ask a question in English and expect a reply in Latin as well.”
A virtual reality headset lets you see a three-dimensional model of an Etruscan sarcophagus. The real sarcophagus is encased in glass in the Villa Giulia Museum in Rome, but the virtual reality experience puts it right in front of you. The experimental VR-AI installation also allows viewers to ask questions to the sarcophagus out loud. The sarcophagus has a statue of a man and woman, but historians don’t know whose ashes are buried inside. “It’s not important how they look,” says Forte. “It’s important how they want to be.”
The sarcophagus would have been a “symbolic, aristocratic way to show power,” Forte explains. The design of the sarcophagus represents an intentional choice about how its owners wanted the world to see them after their death. “This is eternity,” Forte says. “This is forever.”
A display of quotes at the “Rethinking the Past” exhibit.
The exhibit, called “Rethinking the Past,” is on display at the Rubenstein Arts Center until May 24.
When we think about global interconnectedness we often focus on varied cultures, but we tend to forget about innumerable systemic dynamics that could enrich our understanding of the world. The senior presentations given by students in International Comparative Studies to mark the end of the term shared their mission to understand the world better through research.
The exploration of language ideologies in Mauritius, the complex yet fascinating web of transitional justice, the contentious aspects of medical missions in global health, and the intersection between superficiality and urban dynamics in Los Angeles all demonstrated understanding the unseen world at play.
Language and Identity in Mauritius
Katy Turner’s research into the Mauritian education system sheds light on the complex interplay between language and colonial histories. Even though one could argue colonialism is a tale of the past, Turner’s research proved otherwise. In Mauritius, where the creole language — formed by enslaved individuals and now a mother tongue — meets societal resistance, the educational emphasis remains on English and French. Turner’s exploration raises critical questions: How do Mauritian primary school teachers perceive the role of Mauritian Creole, especially given its contentious status? How has the colonial past shaped these perceptions?
Her findings reveal a conflicted landscape. While some view the Mauritian Creole as a relic of the past, advocating for a future aligned with English, others see it as vital for a holistic educational experience. Its colloquial use in classrooms helps connect students with their history, and according to her observation, students didn’t mind its use over English and French, but their parents very much did. They preferred English and French over their own local language. This put me in a daze. Afterall, being Pakistani born and raised, this wasn’t a surprise: English is the language of the rich, and Urdu is the language of the poor. These complex linguistic preferences of these countries highlight how colonized some developing countries are till today.
In Mauritius, the narratives of slaves, parents and educational policies often discourage this practice. This ‘hidden curriculum‘ suggests a deep-seated struggle with identity and linguistic heritage, hinting at a broader dialogue about language as a carrier of culture and history. This colonial hangover is one we need to fight to connect with what our culture really means.
The Anti-Politics of Memory in Transitional Justice
GraceEndrud delves into the “anti-politics” of memory, examining how transitional justice often morphs into a universal narrative that may overlook local truths. Her focus on the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) illuminates the challenges of defining justice in varied contexts — ranging from criminal justice to truth commissions. The ICTJ’s extensive work is reflected in their archival collections spanning several decades. Grace sat in the library searching through archives for days, and went to great lengths (like analyzing the order they were in) to show their global influence also reveals tensions, such as in Iraq where document manipulation was used to sway electoral outcomes.
Blindfolded suspected militants, with possible links to al-Qaeda, are seen at Iraqi police headquarters in Diyala province, north of Baghdad December 5, 2011. Police forces arrested 30 suspected militants during a raid in Diyala province, a police source said. REUTERS/Stringer
This research was inspired by James Ferguson’s analysis in “The Anti-Politics Machine.” It suggested that transitional justice can sometimes strip away the political layers that are essential for understanding and addressing the root causes of injustice.
Reassessing Medical Missions Through a Decolonial Lens
Catherine Purnell’s investigation into medical missions driven by evangelical Christian beliefs poses questions about the possibility of decolonizing global health. The narrative that divides the world into those who help and those who need help is deeply entrenched in the ethos of many medical missions. Purnell’s interviews with medical missionaries reveal an underlying intention to provide care in remote areas, which often includes building schools and water systems alongside healthcare.
However, the real challenge lies in shifting these missions from a model of evangelical humanitarianism to one of genuine decolonization. According to her, true decolonized care would prioritize giving autonomy back to local communities and focusing on solidarity rather than charity. Purnell’s findings suggest a fundamental conflict between the traditional goals of medical missions and the emerging needs of decolonial, equitable healthcare practices.
The Multicultural Dynamics of Urban Spaces
Jess Blumenthal’s exploration into the complex narratives of multiculturalism in Los Angeles offers a fascinating lens through which to view urban dynamics and identity. Starting with the historic intersections in neighborhoods like Little Tokyo/Bronzeville, Jess examines the fluid and often contentious shifts in community compositions and their cultural implications. Originally a Japanese neighborhood, Bronzeville became predominantly African American during World War II when Japanese residents were interned. Such shifts underscore the impermanence and adaptability of urban ethnic landscapes.
Jess connects these historical and cultural narratives to broader literary works like “Tropic of Orange” and Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower.” These works critique the superficiality of multiculturalism, suggesting a more interconnected and deeply woven fabric of society that transcends simplistic understandings of diversity. Jess uses these stories to highlight a poignant metaphor: just as characters in Butler’s work envision a destiny among the stars, our own societal evolution might be seen as an ongoing journey towards a more genuinely integrated multiculturalism.
Conclusion
Together, these presentations accentuated the complexities of cultural identity, memory politics, and health equity in a globalized world. They challenge us to think critically about how languages shape national identity, how justice processes can reflect deeper truths without falling into the traps of depoliticization, and how global health initiatives might genuinely respect and uplift the communities they intend to serve. As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, these discussions are crucial for fostering a more just and equitable global society.
