Duke on Demand

A Duke graduate student's research into how male magnolia green jumping spiders interpret the appearance of other spiders as a friend or foe finds that the pheromone scent of a female makes them respond more quickly, raising their pedipalps for love or their forelegs for fighting.

In his 2013 Duke commencement address, Andrew Barnhill, MDiv '13 and a native of Wilmington, spoke of "sacred moments" students should treasure at Duke -- "moments filled with laughter; moments filled with awe. Through each of them, we are challenged to find our voices born in the crevice of Duke's identity as a place of innovation and a space of sacred leadership." Read more about Barnhill here: http://today.duke.edu/2013/04/barnhill.

A new prototype gigapixel camera creates color photographs 10 times sharper than 20/20 vision and with 100 times the resolution of a consumer camera with 10 megapixels.

Duke University professor David Brady and his colleagues developed the AWARE2 Gigapixel Camera with a single lens, 96 microcameras and a 110-degree field of view. The prototype device improves upon a previous version.

"What's really unique about this camera is that it has very high pixel count for things at finite range," said Brady, the Michael J. Fitzpatrick Professor of Electric Engineering at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering. "It does that in a way no other camera has before because each of the microcameras focuses individually, so objects at various depths can all be in focus."

Brady and his team used the camera to take a picture of Duke's 2013 graduation ceremony in Wallace Wade Stadium. View that image here: http://bit.ly/13U3wNB.

The prototype camera is large -- about three feet cubed -- but Brady and his team are working to condense it.

Learn more here: http://disp.duke.edu/projects/AWARE/.

At a press conference in advance of her Duke University commencement address, alumna and philanthropist Melinda Gates comments on her return to campus and meetings with students.

Read more here: http://today.duke.edu/2013/05/gates2013.

Saying "humanity in the abstract will never inspire you in the same way as human beings you meet," Melinda Gates urged Duke University's graduates Sunday to use new technology to connect with others, including people in the developing world whose lives Americans can now touch in a more personal way.

"Over the course of your lives, I promise you, you will have many opportunities to use technology to make your world bigger, to meet more different kinds of people and to keep in touch with more of the people you meet," she said in the annual commencement ceremony in Wallace Wade Stadium. "I want you to connect because I believe it will inspire you to do something, to make a difference in the world."

Gates, who received undergraduate and business degrees from Duke and later served as a university trustee, said, "it is so fantastic to be back here at my alma mater." She recalled attending Duke basketball games and spending long nights writing computer code as a student, long before she became co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest transparently operated private foundation.

"The way you communicate is the single biggest difference between you now and me a generation ago," she told the graduates. Smartphones and other technologies have proliferated, even in a Kenyan slum she visited recently, making it possible for Americans to get to know people in other countries more personally.

"Your world really can become a neighborhood," Gates said, arguing that "deep human connection ... is not a tool. It's not a means to an end. It is the end -- the purpose and the result of a meaningful life -- and it will inspire the most amazing acts of love, generosity and humanity."

Delivered under a sunny sky, her address highlighted the ceremony at which Duke awarded more than 5,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees, including to those who graduated in September and December.

Read more here: https://today.duke.edu/2013/05/commence2013.

Saying "humanity in the abstract will never inspire you in the same way as human beings you meet," Melinda Gates urged Duke University's graduates Sunday to use new technology to connect with others, including people in the developing world whose lives Americans can now touch in a more personal way. Gates recalled attending Duke basketball games and spending long nights writing computer code as a student, long before she became co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest transparently operated private foundation. Read more here: http://today.duke.edu/2013/05/commence2013.

Duke's most senior senior is Robert Becker. The 80-year-old member of the class of 2013 arrived on campus in the early 1950s but after four years left two courses shy of a degree. After careers in the military and airline industry, Becker returned to Duke this January to finish up. Having taken courses in logic and religion, he's slated to receive a bachelor of arts degree in political science.

The native of Satellite, Fla., should have plenty of fans on hand at commencement. His wife, son, two daughters and five grandchildren plan to attend. As a graduate, he would join brothers Dennis '66 and Richard '56 as a Duke alumnus.

Classes are finished. Now it's time to hit the library and get ready for exams.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the One Day at Duke Project. You sent in more than a thousand photos, videos and messages documenting life at the university on April 19. Look for a TV commercial this fall that includes your content.

In research news, a study by Duke economist Patrick Bayer finds Black and Hispanic homebuyers pay 3 percent more on average for comparable homes than whites.

The new "Sports and Society" online course kicks off on April 30. The Duke-Coursera class takes a look at the world of sports through the lens of anthropology.

Graduation is May 12. Philanthropist and Duke alumna Melinda French Gates is the commencement speaker. And the most senior, senior who will be graduating is octogenarian Robert Becker.

David Ferrucci, an IBM Fellow and artificial intelligence scientist, gives a talk "AI: In and Out of Jeopardy," as part the Duke University Provost Lecture Series "Information Futures." In 2007, Ferrucci took on the Jeopardy Challenge --- to create an intelligent computer system that could rival human champions at the game of Jeopardy. After four years of intense research and development, he and his team succeeded when their computer Watson beat the highest-ranked Jeopardy champions of all time on national television in February 2011.

Note to Editors: Download HD files of these clips without graphics here: https://dukenews.box.com/real-estate-study.

Black and Hispanic homebuyers paid about 3.5 percent more for comparable homes in four metropolitan U.S. markets than white buyers did, according to a Duke University-led analysis of more than 2 million home sales from 1990-2008.

The study compared prices for houses of comparable quality purchased by black, Hispanic and white buyers within the same neighborhood in Chicago, Baltimore/Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The disparities in purchase price were not explained by variation in buyers' income, wealth or access to credit, according to the study, which appears on the website of the National Bureau of Economic Research, at http://www.nber.org/papers/w18069.

Also, the findings did not reveal any clear evidence of racial prejudice or animosity on the part of home sellers, as the premium paid by black and Hispanic buyers did not vary much with the composition of neighborhoods or the race of seller.

The researchers said they could not ultimately determine exactly why minority buyers paid more when buying a comparable house.

One possible explanation is that black and Hispanic buyers were more likely to be first-time homebuyers and, as a result, may not be as experienced at negotiating the asking price, said senior author Pat Bayer, chairman and professor in the economics department at Duke.

"But we also know from other research that minority buyers are shown a more limited set of properties by real estate agents and may, therefore, feel like they have to pay more when they see a house that really suits their needs and tastes," he said.

Regardless of the reason, the researchers said the findings show that minorities continue to pay higher premiums for housing years after the landmark Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibits discrimination in housing transactions based on race, gender, religion and other attributes.

"Paying thousands of dollars more for each home purchase obviously makes it more difficult to build home equity and wealth," Bayer said. "Our findings highlight these disparities and point toward the need to consider what can be done to help reduce them.

"The hopeful news is that we do not detect any obvious pattern of prejudice by sellers, raising the prospects for addressing this issue with better real estate information and practices."

The study found differing degrees of disparity, including:

-- The home prices paid by black buyers were highest in the Chicago and Maryland areas, where blacks represent a larger portion of the population than other cities in the study, and segregation levels have historically been very high. Estimated costs for black buyers were 5.4 percent higher than for whites in Cook County, Ill., which includes the city of Chicago, and 3.9 percent higher in the Baltimore metro area

-- The study found weaker evidence of price disparity for black buyers in Los Angeles and San Francisco, where the estimated costs were 1.1 to 1.2 percent higher than for whites.

-- Home prices for Hispanic buyers in Chicago, Maryland and San Francisco were 2.5 to 3 percent higher, but only 1.2 percent higher in Los Angeles.

The methodology of the paper involved combining a data set of transaction prices and buyer/seller attributes with a new research design that isolates variation in sales prices for comparable properties.

For each of the more than 2 million transactions, the researchers collected data on the sales price as well as detailed information about the house location and housing attributes for homes that sold multiple times between 1990 and 2008.

Bayer said his research differed from previous studies on the subject because it accounted carefully for the price that the home had sold for in a previous transaction and the rate of appreciation in the neighborhood.

"We are trying to compare apples to apples as well as possible. In essence, our approach is to compare two homes in the same neighborhood that each sold for the same amount of money several years ago -- looking to see who pays more when they are re-sold to buyers of different races and ethnicities today," Bayer said.

Other authors of the paper were Marcus D. Casey, University of Illinois at Chicago; Fernando Ferreira, University of Pennsylvania; and Robert McMillan, University of Toronto.

Funding for the study came from the National Science Foundation, the Research Sponsor Program of the Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center at the Wharton School, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

A probing and wide-ranging conversation with Robert J. Lefkowitz P'90, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, a professor at Duke University Medical Center, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher; and Luke Powery, the new dean of Duke Chapel and an ordained Baptist minister.

Join us for this annual speaker showcase featuring Jill Granoff '83, CEO of Kellwood Company, who has over 20 years of senior executive leadership experience in the fashion industry, including Kenneth Cole Productions, Liz Claiborne Inc., Victoria Secret and The Estee Lauder Companies, Inc., and David P. Kirchhoff E'88, president and CEO of Weight Watchers International Inc., the world's leading provider of weight management services. Moderating this program is Lesley Jane Seymour '78, editor-in-chief of MORE magazine.

One day at Duke. This Friday -- April 19 -- you can contribute to Duke's next TV commercial. Just capture a "Duke moment" in words, video or photo and submit it to the One-Day-At-Duke website.

We have a winner. Engineering student Matt Pleatman and his team won the $50,000 grand prize in this year's Start-Up Challenge for their idea of an all-in-one contact-lens-case-and-solution-carrier that fits into a wallet.

In a series of papers in the journal Science, Duke professor Steven Churchill analyzes recently discovered bones of the proto-human specimen Australopithecus sediba.

Listen up for big ideas. The TEDxDuke event April 20 features short talks by students, faculty and staff on "ideas worth spreading."

Congratulations to Patrick Oathout and Jacob Tobia. The juniors were named Truman Scholars. And fellow juniors Kushal Seetharam and Yaohua Xue were awarded Goldwater Scholarships.

Finally, we hope all the alumni who came back for reunions last weekend had a blast.