The Duke Digest - October 1, 2010

 

In Today's Issue:

  • Gates Calls Upon Students to Join Military During Lecture at Duke
  • The Sanford School of Public Policy Celebrates One Year Anniversary
  • Duke Enters into Hog Waste Pilot Project Partnership for Methane Capture
  • Duke Law Professor Testifies Before Senate Judiciary Committee
  • Researchers Find Phone Apps Sending Data Without Notification
  • Opinion: UN Development Goals Miss the Mark

GATES CALLS UPON STUDENTS TO JOIN MILITARY DURING LECTURE AT DUKE
More of the nation's leading universities should join Duke in providing officers and others to serve in the military, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a packed auditorium Wednesday evening at Duke University. Gates also said the American people are losing contact with those who make up its military, and the nation needs to understand the service and sacrifices that U.S. military personnel and their families make.


The Secretary also spoke to a group of ROTC cadets from Duke and three other local universities and guest lectured to students in the American Grand Strategy Class as a part of his visit to campus.

Read More:
Gates Calls Upon Students to Join Military (Duke News)
Gates Praises Service, Sacrifice of All-Volunteer Force During Lecture at Duke (Defense.gov)


THE SANFORD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY CELEBRATES ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY
The Sanford School of Public Policy celebrated its inauguration as Duke's 10th school last fall with congratulatory toasts and dinners, a guest lecture series, and a Founder's Day speech by Sanford's first director, Joel Fleishman. A year later, the celebrations have ended. The journey from Institute to School - papered with a strategic plan, a new name and logo, new faculty by-laws and a system of governance, a code of professional conduct, fundraising goals, frameworks for future hiring and multiple financial planning spreadsheets - is officially over.  Now, the school's emphasis is on delivering the promised benefits of becoming a school, said Dean Bruce Kuniholm.

Read More:
The Sanford School, A Year Later (DukeNews)


DUKE ENTERS INTO HOG WASTE PILOT PROJECT PARTNERSHIP FOR METHANE CAPTURE
Duke University and Duke Energy are working together to turn hog manure into green gold. The university and the power company, with financial assistance from state and federal agencies, broke ground on September 27 on a pilot system for managing hog waste that can control greenhouse gas emissions, reduce pollutants and generate renewable energy. It is expected to be fully operational in mid-February 2011.

The prototype system is being built at Loyd Ray Farms, a 9,000-head hog finishing facility in Boonville, N.C., about 115 miles west of Raleigh. It is intended to serve as a model for other hog farms seeking to manage waste and develop on-farm renewable power.

Read More:
Duke Enters into Hog Waste Partnership (DukeNews)


DUKE LAW PROFESSOR TESTIFIES BEFORE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
Professor Samuel W. Buell testified before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on Sept. 28.  A former federal prosecutor and member of the Enron Task Force, Buell addressed the fate of fraud prosecutions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Skilling.

Read More:
Buell Testimony (Judiciary.senate.gov)
Hearing Information and Webcast (Judiciary.senate.gov)


RESEARCHERS FINDING PHONE APPS SENDING PRIVATE DATA WITHOUT NOTIFICATION
Peter Gilbert, a graduate student in computer science at Duke University, and his adviser, Landon Cox, an assistant computer science professor, are part of a team of researchers who have developed TaintDroid, a prototype designed to identify phone apps that transmit private data. The phone-based tool monitors how applications access and use privacy sensitive data, such as location, microphone, camera and phone numbers, and provides feedback within seconds of using a newly installed app.

A study describing TaintDroid and the team's results supports and expands upon a controversial SMobile Systems study published in June 2010 which found that 20 percent of the then-available 48,000 third-party applications for the Android operating system provided sensitive or private information to outside sources. In the new study, the team only monitored the Android platform, but the findings suggest that investigating other operating systems is warranted.

Read More:
Researchers Finding Phone Apps Sending Data Without Notification (DukeNews)


OPINION: UN DEVELOPMENT GOALS MISS THE MARK
Marc Bellemare, an assistant professor of economics and public policy in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke, writes in an opinion piece about the UN's Millenium Development Goals (MDGs):

"As a student and teacher of development policy, I believe it is high time for policymakers to stop wasting their time with the pie-in-the-sky MDGs. In short, while the intention that led UN member states to adopt them is noble, the MDGs themselves are all just talk...Instead of making vague promises about delivering overly ambitious results by a specific date, we should promise the implementation of policies that have been shown to work."

Professor Bellemare can be reached at marc.bellemare@duke.edu.

Read More:
UN Development Goals Miss the Mark (DukeNews)