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.
Two of the buildings at Bennett Place, a preserved family farm in Durham known largely for its role in a Civil War surrender. Kalei Porter, a Duke Liberal Studies graduate student, recently led an event focusing on the natural history and land use of Bennett Place over time.
Bennett Place, a North Carolina State Historic Site in Durham, is known for its role in a Civil War surrender, but a recent event focusing on the site’s natural history sought to broaden that story. Kalei Porter, a Graduate Liberal Studies student at Duke, led the event, which focused on changing land use at Bennett Place over time.
Jim Barrett, a volunteer tour guide, led a tour of Bennett Place focused on the more well known parts of its history. “The Civil War was a series of five military surrenders,” he explains. The first occurred in Appomattox Court House in Virginia, but while that marked a symbolic end to the war, technically only the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia surrendered there. Another surrender meeting occurred on the land now known as Bennett Place, where Union General Sherman and Confederate General Johnston met at the Bennett family’s small farm to discuss their terms of surrender.
That meeting ultimately led to the preservation of the farm as a historic site, but the history of Bennett Place “should not be an exclusive Civil War story,” Porter says. She has a degree in environmental biology, and her work at Bennett Place combines her interests in ecology and history.
For the past two academic years, Porter has been involved with the North Carolina Lives and Legacies Project, which uses research to tell more nuanced, inclusive stories about land use at sites like Bennett Place. The project, which is based in Duke’s Information Science + Studies, has also received support from Bass Connections in the Vice Provost’s Office for Interdisciplinary Studies and Duke University Libraries. This summer, Kalei will continue her research as a Graduate Project Manager in a History+ team.
James Bennett and his family were small-scale, yeoman farmers. They had about 200 acres, Porter says, “sustaining four to ten people.” They grew most of their own food and sold handmade clothing and crops like watermelons and vegetables at a local market, Barrett says. The site was preserved by civil leaders, including one of Washington Duke’s sons, according to Barrett. The original house was destroyed in a fire in 1921 but was rebuilt in 1962 with material from a similar house, Porter explains. On Barrett’s tour, he mentioned that Sherman brought an illustrator to the surrender meeting, and the pictures from that day still exist, so we know what the house originally looked like. The new house was rebuilt to resemble the old one.
Porter’s event included a display of plants from Duke’s herbarium. The dried plants she chose were collected in North Carolina in different decades, preserving important information about flowering time and native flora in specific sites. “You have a little slice of spring from as far back as the 30’s,” Porter says about the plants she chose.
Plants from Duke’s herbarium were on display at the event. Specimens like these can preserve important information like what time of year plants were flowering in different decades.
The exhibit at the event includes other items, too, like a list of who has used this land at different points in history. Before 1782, according to a sign at the event, several Native American tribes inhabited the area, including the Seponi, Cheraw, Catawba, Lumbee, Occaneechi, and Shakori. In 1782, Jacob Baldwin purchased the land, and it changed hands at least twice again before James Bennett bought it in 1846.
There is also a detailed soil map from 1920 on display. Such surveys can make farming more profitable since different crops do best in different soil conditions. Porter says the first geological survey in North Carolina was conducted in the 1850s, making North Carolina only the third state—and the first state in the South—to do soil surveys.
Porter has been working on transcribing Bennett’s ledger papers, which she describes as “a cross between a diary, a planner, and a credit card log.” They provide a record of daily life for a small farmer in North Carolina. Porter says Bennett made a lot of notes about fixing his tools.
Later in the day, Porter led a tour of the site with a focus on natural history. We start on a path lined with fences. Historically, it was a road that went from Raleigh to Hillsborough, and it also “roughly lines up with some of the Native American trading routes that predated the property,” Porter says.
The Unity Monument at Bennett Place. The monument was built in the 1920s, and its original meaning isn’t entirely clear.
We stop at the Unity monument, built in the 1920s soon after the Bennett house burned down. Robert Buerglener, Research Associate, Duke Information Science + Studies, explained to me earlier that the Unity monument may have survived because its meaning is more ambiguous than many Confederate monuments. Porter says the monument incorporated stone from the North, West, and South to represent the theme of unity.
We tour the house and separate kitchen. Both give glimpses into the lives of the Bennett Family. A ladle made from a dried gourd. Jars of persimmon seeds and other items that, according to Barrett, were used as wartime replacements for more typical ingredients. Wood siding on the house that Porter says dates from the 1850s.
It’s not just the buildings that reveal the story of this land. Porter points out trees, shrubs, and fences as well.
Before the Civil War, she says, livestock here roamed free. Buildings and gardens would have been fenced to keep the livestock out. After the war, however, fencing became more expensive, and people started creating fences around the livestock instead and building cheaper, less sturdy fences.
As we walk toward a nature trail at the back of the property, Porter draws our attention to the pine trees. Both loblolly and shortleaf pines grow here. Historically, shortleaf would have been more common in this area, but places that have been recently managed for timber tend to have loblolly. Most of these pines are still relatively young; they were not here when the Bennetts lived on this land.
In the forest, many of the low-growing plants we pass are species of blueberry. Porter has searched through digitized North Carolina newspapers for records of the word “blueberry.” It was first mentioned in the 1880s as a verb, blueberrying (women going out to pick wild blueberries) but wasn’t grown commercially in this area until the 1930s.
Porter ends her tour by asking us to look at the sky. Even the sky could have changed in the centuries since the Bennetts farmed this land. Today it’s clear and blue, but modern pollution could make it less blue than it used to be, Porter says, and some days we might see airplane contrails, which the Bennetts would never have seen back then. “Sometimes the sky is even asynchronous with time,” Porter says.
This February, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments challenging laws in Florida and Texas that would regulate how social media companies like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) control what posts can appear on their sites.
Given the legal challenges involved over the concerns of the role social media plays in creating polarization, there is a need for further research to explore the issue. Enter Duke’s Polarization Lab, a multidisciplinary research hub designed to explore and mitigate the societal effects of online engagement.
In an April 17 seminar, Polarization Lab postdoc Max Allamong delved into the workings and discoveries of this innovative lab, which brings together experts from seven disciplines and various career stages, supported by twelve funders and partners, including five UNC affiliates.
Duke postdoctoral associate Max Allamong
Unless you’re okay with people stealing your data for their own research, conducting studies based on social media is next to impossible, Allamong explained.
In their attempt to conduct research ethically, the lab has developed a tool called “Discussit.” This platform enables users to see the partisanship of people they are communicating with online, aiming to reduce polarization by fostering dialogue across political divides. To put it simply, they’ll know if they’re talking to someone from the left or if they’re talking to someone from the right. Building on this, Allamong also introduced “Spark Social,” a social media simulator where researchers can adjust variables to study interactions under controlled conditions. This system not only allows for the modification of user interactions but also employs large language models (like those used in ChatGPT) to simulate realistic conversations.
Allamong highlighted a particularly revealing study from the lab, titled “Outnumbered Online,” which examined how individuals behave in partisan echo chambers versus balanced environments. The study placed users in forums where they were either in the majority or minority in terms of political alignment, revealing that being outnumbered led to increased self-censorship and perceptions of a toxic environment.
The lab’s ongoing work also explores the broader implications of polarization on political engagement. By manipulating the type of content users see, researchers are examining variables like believability and replicability of data generated by AI. This approach not only contributes to academic knowledge but also has practical implications for designing healthier online spaces.
As social media continues to shape political and social discourse, the work of Duke’s Polarization Lab and Allamong serves as a safe space to conduct ethical and meaningful research. The insights gained here will better equip us to analyze the polarization created by social media companies, and how that affects the political landscape of the country. The longstanding questions of the effects of echo chambers may soon be answered. This research will undoubtedly influence how we engage with and understand the digital world around us, making it a crucial endeavour for fostering a more informed and less polarized society.
The COVID-19 pandemic sometimes feels like a problem we mostly dealt with yesterday, not one we’re still facing today. However, Duke medical anthropologist Harris Solomon had a different story to tell in the Trent Humanities in Medicine Lecture on April 9.
Harris Solomon. Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University
During the height of the pandemic, hospitals morphed into war zones where the frontlines became the ICU rooms. Like never before, these rooms became a no-man’s-land that few others would cross. A separation was born.
This separation, however, was beyond a physical space; it was a delineation of roles and responsibilities. Nurses often found themselves acting as intermediaries between the patient and the external healthcare team, prompting a sense of isolation and moral burden. They wrestled with their fears in solitary confinement, while colleagues relayed instructions over walkie-talkies—a stark contrast to the collaborative nature of pre-pandemic medicine. Protocols that were once straightforward now needed a touch of ‘MacGyvering,’ with clinicians making do with what was available.
The rigidity of clinical trials also faced challenges; the blinding of studies was questioned as lifesaving drugs teetered on the edge of accessibility. Solomon gave an example of what this change looked like in real life. A patient was due to be treated, and they said that they didn’t care about the details. Even if it was a placebo, they were fine with it. While he didn’t go into the specifics of what had happened, he used this story to accentuate the disparity between evidence and treatment. People don’t care about the treatment as much as they used to.
“We make decisions like we never did before. We summon the need to accept uncertainty”, Solomon said.
As the crisis was evolving, and the world was recovering from the aftermath of COVID, the fabric of healthcare work found itself to be changed forever. Processes and practices that were once considered to be stable, are now brought under a microscope in a post-pandemic world.
The pandemic has indeed been a catalyst for change, but is this change good? While there is no black-and-white answer, I left the room feeling a bit uncomfortable. Although the pandemic has prompted a reevaluation of the health care system, have we innovated, or have we just found shortcuts?
More than 40 years since its signing, the United States still has not ratified an international agreement known as the “constitution of the oceans.” In a webinar held April 2, two of the world’s leading ocean diplomacy scholars met to discuss its history, challenges, and the U.S.’s potential role in the future.
The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea was truly revolutionary for its time. Unraveling against the backdrop of decades of conflict pertaining to maritime affairs, the significance of this conference and its attempts at negotiating a comprehensive legal framework cannot be understated. Key figures in this development include the members of the United Nations, coastal and landlocked states, the scientific community, environmental community, and developing nations. Yet, with the conclusion of this unifying conference, a singular question remained: What comes next?
This question is what David Balton, the executive director of the U.S. Artic Steering Committee, and David Freestone, a Professor at George Washington University and the Executive Secretary of the Sargasso Sea Commission, aimed to address in a webinar titled, “The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea at 40.” In this discussion a range of topics were discussed but the primary focus was providing viewers with a comprehensive understanding of the events of this convention and the way this history plays out in modern times.
Picture of Ambassador David Balton (Obtained from the Wilson Center)
The 1982 convention was one of multiple attempts at setting parameters and guidelines for maritime control. In 1958, the council met for the first time to discuss growing concerns regarding the need for a comprehensive legal framework regarding ocean governance. In this they brought multiple representatives worldwide to discuss the breadth of territorial waters, the rights of coastal states, freedom of navigation, and the exploitation of marine resources. This conversation laid the groundwork for future discussions. However, it was largely ineffective at generating a treaty as they were unable to reach a consensus on the breadth of territorial waters. This first conference is referred to as UNCLOS I.
Following 1958, in 1960 the members of the council and associated parties convened once again to discuss the issues brought forth by UNCLOS I. The purpose of this conference was to further discuss issues pertaining to the Law of the Sea and build a framework to begin ratification of a binding treaty to ensure that conflict regarding the sea diminishes greatly. This discussion was set in the context of the Cold War. This new setting complicated discussions as talks regarding the implementation of nuclear weapons under the deep seabed further elicited great debate and tensions. While the aim of this meeting was of course to reach a general agreement on these subjects, major differences between states and other parties prohibited UNCLOS II from producing said treaty.
UNCLOS III served as the breadwinner of this development, yet this is not to say that results were immediate. Negotiations for UNCLOS III were the longest of the three as they spanned from 1973 to 1982. UNCLOS II was particularly special due to its ability to produce revolutionary concepts such as archipelagic status and the establishment of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ), granting coastal states exclusive rights over fishing and economic resources within 200 miles of their shores. In addition, this led to the development of the International Seabed Authority and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Despite the limitations and unfinished agenda that preceded this, the treaty was officially ratified in 1994 at Montego Bay. The convention initially received 157 signatories and currently holds participation from 169 parties. Absent from this group are the United States, Turkey, and Venezuela. The convention was designed to work as a package deal and required nations to fully commit to the agreement or abstain entirely. For this reason, the United States retains a nonparty, observer status despite to their adherence to the rules and guidelines of the treaty.
After this explanation, Balton and Freestone addressed the big question: What comes next? As of right now, the United States is still not a signatory of this treaty. However, this is not to say that they are in violation of this treaty either. The United States participates in discussions and negotiations related to UNCLOS issues, both within the United Nations and through bilateral and multilateral engagements. In addition, the Navy still upholds international law in dealings concerning navigational rights. The one factor many claims prohibits the United States from signing is the possibility of their sovereignty being challenged by certain provisions within the treaty. In spite of this, many continue to push to change this reality, advocating for the United States to ratify this agreement.
Picture of Professor David Freestone (Obtained from Flavia at World Maritime University)
The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea remains a pivotal moment in the history of international maritime governance. This Convention led to many insightful and necessary developments which will continue to set precedent for generations to come. While imperfect, the efforts put forth by many nations and third parties to ensure that it remains consistent with modern day times is very telling of the hopeful development of this treaty. Furthermore, while the future of U.S. involvement in the treaty is uncertain, the frameworks established by the three UNCLOS’ provide a solid foundation for addressing contemporary challenges and furthering international cooperation.
Look at the nearest window. What did you see first—the glass itself or what was on the other side? For birds, that distinction is a matter of life and death.
A dead red-eyed vireo above the entrance to the Brodhead Center at Duke. Every year, millions of birds die after colliding with windows. Buildings with lots of glass are particularly dangerous.
Every year, up to one billion birds die from hitting windows. Windows kill more birds than almost any other cause of human-related bird mortality, second only to feral and domestic cats. Both the transparency and reflectiveness of glass can confuse flying birds. They either don’t see the glass at all and try to fly through it, or they’re fooled by reflections of safe habitat or open sky. And at night, birds may be disoriented by lit-up buildings and end up hitting windows by mistake. In all cases, the result is usually the same. The majority of window collision victims die on impact. Even the survivors may die soon after from internal bleeding, concussions, broken bones, or other injuries.
Madison Chudzik, a biology Ph.D. student in the Lipshutz Lab at Duke, studies bird-window collisions and migrating birds. “Purely the fact that we’ve built buildings is killing those birds,” she says.
Every spring and fall, billions of birds in the United States alone migrate to breeding and wintering grounds. Many travel hundreds or thousands of miles. During peak migration, tens of thousands of birds may fly across Durham County in a single night. Not all of them make it.
Chudzik’s research focuses on nocturnal flight calls, which migrating birds use to communicate while they fly. Many window collision victims are nocturnal migrants lured to their deaths by windows and lights. Chudzik wants to know “how we can use nocturnal flight calls as an indicator to examine collision risks in species.”
Chudzik (back) setting up one of her recording devices on the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. The devices record flight calls from birds migrating at night. Image courtesy of Chudzik.
Previous research, Chudzik says, has identified a strong correlation between the number of flight calls recorded on a given night and the overall migration intensity that night. “If sparrows have a high number of detections, there is likely a high number migrating through the area,” Chudzik explains. But some species call more than others, and there is “taxonomic bias in collision risk,” with some species that call more colliding less and vice versa. Chudzik is exploring this relationship in her research.
Unlike bird songs, nocturnal flight calls are very short. The different calls are described with technical terms like “zeep” and “seep.” Chudzik is part of a small but passionate community of people with the impressive ability to identify species by the minute differences between their flight calls. “It’s a whole other world of… language, basically,” Chudzik says.
Chudzik can identify a species not only by hearing its flight call but also by seeing its spectrogram, a visual representation of sound. This spectrogram, from a recording on Adler Planetarium, has flight calls from four species. The x-axis represents time, while the y-axis shows frequency. The brightness or intensity indicates amplitude. Image from Chudzik.
She began studying nocturnal flight calls for research she did as an undergraduate, but her current project no longer needs to rely on talented humans to identify every individual call. A deep learning model called Nighthawk, trained on a wealth of meticulous flight call data, can identify calls from their spectrograms with 95% accuracy. It is free and accessible to anyone, and much of the data it’s been trained on comes from non-scientists, such as submissions from a Facebook community devoted to nocturnal flight calls. Chudzik estimates that perhaps a quarter of the people on that Facebook page are researchers. “The rest,” she says, “are people who somehow stumbled upon it and… fell in love with nocturnal flight calling.”
In addition to studying nocturnal flight calls, Chudzik’s research will investigate how topography, like Lake Michigan by Chicago, affects migration routes and behavior and how weather affects flight calls. Birds seem to communicate more during inclement weather, and bad weather sometimes triggers major collision events. Last fall in Chicago, collisions with a single building killed hundreds of migratory birds in one night.
Chudzik had a recorder on that building. It had turned off before the peak of the collision event, but the flight call recordings from that night are still staggering. In one 40-second clip, there were 300 flight calls identified. Normally, Chudzik says, she might expect a maximum of about seven in that time period.
Nights like these, with enormous numbers of migrants navigating the skies, can be especially deadly. Fortunately, solutions exist. The problem often lies in convincing people to use them. There are misconceptions that extreme changes are required to protect birds from window collisions, but simple solutions can make a huge difference. “We’re not telling you to tear down that building,” Chudzik says. “There are so many tools to stop this from happening that… the argument of ‘well, it’s too expensive, I don’t want to do it…’ is just thrown out the window.”
A yellow-bellied sapsucker collision casualty in front of the French Family Science Center last year.
What can individuals and institutions do to prevent bird-window collisions?
Turn off lights at night.
For reasons not completely understood, birds flying at night are attracted to lit-up urban areas, and lights left on at night can become a death trap. Though window collisions are a year-round problem, migration nights can lead to high numbers of victims, and turning off non-essential lights can help significantly. One study on the same Chicago building where last year’s mass collision event occurred found that halving lighted windows during migration could reduce bird-window collisions by more than 50%.
Chudzik is struck by “the fact that this is such a big conservation issue, but it literally just takes a flip of a switch.” BirdCast and Audubon suggest taking actions like minimizing indoor and outdoor lights at night during spring and fall migration, keeping essential outdoor lights pointed down and adding motion sensors to reduce their use, and drawing blinds to help keep light from leaking out.
Use window decals and other bird-friendly glass treatments.
There are many products and DIY solutions intended to make windows safer for birds, like window decals, external screens, patterns of dots or lines, and strings hanging in front of a window at regular intervals. For window treatments to be most effective, they should be applied to the exterior of the glass, and any patterning should be no more than two inches apart vertically and horizontally. This helps protect even the smallest birds, like kinglets and hummingbirds.
It can be hard to see from a distance, but these windows on Duke’s Fitzpatrick Center have been retrofitted with tiny white dots, an effective strategy to reduce bird-window collisions.
A 2016 window collision study at Duke conducted by several scientists, including Duke Professor Nicolette Cagle, Ph.D., identified the Fitzpatrick Center as a window collision hotspot. As a result, Duke retrofitted some of the building’s most dangerous windows with bird-friendly dot patterning. Ongoing collision monitoring has revealed about a 70% reduction in collisions for that building since the dots were added.
One obstacle to widespread use of bird-friendly design practices and window treatments is concerns about aesthetics. But bird-friendly windows can be aesthetically pleasing, too, and “Dead birds hurt your aesthetic anyway.”
If nothing else, don’t clean your windows.
Bird-window collisions don’t just happen in cities and on university campuses. In fact, most fatal collisions involve houses and other buildings less than four stories tall. Window treatments like the dots on the Fitzpatrick building can be costly for homeowners, but anything you can put on the outside of a window will help.
“Don’t clean your windows,” Chudzik suggests—smudges may also help birds recognize the glass as a barrier.
Window collisions at Duke
The best thing Duke could do, Chudzik says, is to be open to treating more windows. Every spring, students in Cagle’s Wildlife Surveys class, which I am taking now, collect data on window collision victims found around several buildings on campus. Meanwhile, a citizen science iNaturalist project collects records of dead birds seen by anyone at campus. If you find a dead bird near a window at Duke, you can help by submitting it to the Bird-window collisions project on iNaturalist. Part of the goal is to identify window collision hotspots in order to advocate for more window treatments like the dots on the Fitzpatrick Center.
Spring migration is happening now. BirdCast’s modeling tools estimate that 260,000 birds crossed Durham County last night. They are all protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. However, Chudzik says, “We haven’t thought to protect them while they’re actually migrating.” The law is intended to protect species that migrate, but “it’s not saying ‘while you are migrating you have more protections,’” Chudzik explains. Some have argued that it should, however, suggesting that the Migratory Bird Treaty Act should mandate safer windows to help protect migrants while they’re actually migrating.
“This whole world comes alive while we’re asleep, and… most people have no idea,” Chudzik says about nocturnal flight calls. She is shown here on Northwestern University, one of the Chicago buildings where she has placed recorders for her research. Photo courtesy of Chudzik.
We can’t protect every bird that passes overhead at night, but by making our buildings safer, we can all help more birds get one step closer to where they need to go.
