Duke researchers continue to be at the forefront of many exciting and potentially life-altering studies. In 2002-2003 faculty and researchers garnered $364.9 million to support important scholarship in areas as diverse as prostate cancer, sea turtles and “buckytubes.” For the first time, the Institute for Scientific Information this year ranked Duke among the top ten universities in the nation (along with Harvard, Stanford, MIT, UC-San Diego, Yale, UC-Berkeley, Columbia, Cal Tech, and Michigan) in a Science Magazine report that tracks university performance in terms of citation impact.

Dr. Kimberly Blackwell, assistant professor of oncology, reported that breast cancer tumors that stop responding to the drug tamoxifen actually change their cellular characteristics and respond to other types of drugs, including Herceptin. The findings could mean a major advance for thousands of women who have limited options for cancer treatment, she said.

Photonics and ultrasound engineering researchers from Duke and George Washington University collaborated to design an optical scanner tiny enough to be inserted into the body, where its light beams might someday detect abnormalities hidden in the walls of the colon, bladder or esophagus. The experimental device is described in an article in the April 15 issue of Optics Letters. When approved for use in hospitals and clinics, it could provide a new capability for endoscopy procedures. The key researchers are both at the Pratt School of Engineering--Stephen Smith, professor of biomedical engineering, and Joseph Izatt, associate professor of biomedical engineering.

In a NASA-funded grant, Professor Roni Avissar, chairman of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Pratt School, and research associate David Werth reported that cutting down forests in the Amazon could cause a reduction of summer rainfall more than 1,000 miles away in the Midwestern United States and the Dakotas. Some 15 percent of the Amazon rain forest already has been cut and turned into pasture. Using mathematical simulations of climate behavior, the researchers looked at what might happen if the entire Amazon were converted to pasture land. The results document the dramatic impact of rain forest degradation on other areas of the globe.

Media from across the globe reported on the work of Professor Amy Needham, associate professor of psychological and brain sciences and lead author of a study that discovered that fitting infants with Velcro-covered "sticky mittens" gives them a developmental jump start in learning to explore objects. The researchers placed the mittens on infants too young to grasp objects, but the mittens allowed the infants to snag Velcro-fitted toys merely by swiping at them. Needham says the findings show how important it is to provide a rich set of opportunities for infants to learn about the world around them.

In addition to carrying out a broad variety of research, Duke experts have also written books that reached out to mainstream audiences. In their new book Why We See What We Do: An Empirical Theory of Vision, for example, Duke neurobiologist Dale Purves and Beau Lotto of the Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London claim that the human visual system does not generate a picture of what actually exists in front of the viewer at any given moment. Purves and Lotto describe eyesight instead as a reflex response to the accumulation of past experiences.