Under the leadership of Jenny Tung and co-directors, Kathleen Mullan Harris, James E. Haar Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Alessandro Bartolomucci , Associate Professor, Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology, University of Minnesota, the “Animal Models for the Social Dimensions of Health and Aging Research Network” (https://www.animalsocialaging-network.org/, an NIH-supported High Priority Research Network) is pleased to announce the 2020 call for Pilots and Feasibility Projects! These projects support research on animal models or comparative studies relevant for understanding the social determinants of health and aging. They are appropriate for the generation of key preliminary data important for demonstrating the potential of new research in this area, especially directions with strong potential for future independent funding.
Close bonds with the opposite sex can have non-romantic benefits. And not just for people, but for our primate cousins, too. Drawing on 35 years of data, a new study of more than 540 baboons in Amboseli National Park in Kenya finds that male baboons that have close female friends have higher rates of survival than those who don’t. Researchers have often assumed that when a male is friendlier to certain females, it’s for the reproductive perks: to better protect his offspring, or to boost his chances of mating with her. But the new study points to an additional potential benefit: female friends may help him live a longer life.
n just a few months, the COVID-19 pandemic swiftly and substantially worsened mental health among U.S. hourly service workers and their children – especially those experiencing multiple hardships, according to new research from the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University and Barnard College. The study leverages real-time, daily survey data collected from Feb. 20, before the pandemic hit the U.S., to April 27, when it was well underway, to examine how the crisis affected parents’ and children’s mental well-being. The 645 survey respondents were parents of young children working in hourly service-industry positions in retail, food service or hotel industries in a large U.S. city. Nearly half (49.5%) of the participants were Black Americans, 23% were Hispanic Americans, and 83% were women.
Under the leadership of Dana Pasquale, Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Sociology, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have awarded the innovative two-year “Respondent-Driven Sampling, Respiratory Disease Surveillance Study (the SNOWBALL Study)” to a large consortium of Duke researchers, to better understand SARS-CoV-2 Transmission in Durham County, NC. The SNOWBALL Study brings together researchers from Duke Forge, Duke Crucible, the Covidentify Study , the Duke Population Research Institute (DUPRI) and the MESSI Study to investigate the potential of the Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) methodology. The RDS approach relies on respondents’ active engagement of their own close-contact networks to build a self-generating contact trace from persons who test positive for infection with SARS-CoV-2.
The NIA supported Animal Models Research Network under the leadership of Jenny Tung, Associate Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology at Duke University, Alessandro Bartolomucci, Associate Professor of Integrative Biology and Physiology at University of Minnesota, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, James E. Haar Distinguished Professor of Sociology at UNC, has recently selected its inaugural cohort of Bruce McEwen Career Development Fellows. These awards support outstanding junior scientists with high potential to advance the use of animal models or comparative approaches to understand the social determinants of health and aging.
Two Duke Predoctoral students, Ruth M Wygle, Department of Sociology and Sarah Petry, Sanford School of Public Policy, have been selected to participate in the International Max Planck Research School for Population, Health and Data Science (IMPRS-PHDS). This new and unique three-year doctoral program aims at training the next generation of population scientists by providing training in the materials and methods of demography and population health combined with advanced skills in statistics, mathematical modeling, and data science. The School is hosted by two core partners, the MPIDR and the University of Rostock, in partnership with ten affiliated institutions worldwide that have complementary strengths. In addition to Duke, other partner universities include the University of Greifswald, the University of Groningen/NIDI, Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam, the University of Helsinki, Oxford University, the University of St. Andrews, Stockholm University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Washington.
Scott M. Lynch, Professor of Sociology, has been awarded a five year Center Grant funded by the Division of Social and Behavioral Research of the National Institute of Aging, securing ongoing support for the Center for Population Health and Aging (CPHA) at Duke. With a legacy that extends well over four decades, CPHA provides a synergistic, interdisciplinary environment for advancing cutting-edge research and cultivating faculty and students focused on the study of aging through network of population scientists from the social and behavioral sciences and the biological, health, and statistical sciences at Duke.
Christopher Wildeman, Professor of Sociology, joins Duke University and the Duke University Population Research Institute (DUPRI) as its newest Faculty Scholar. Wildeman comes to Duke from Cornell University where he was Professor of Policy Analysis and Management in the College of Human Ecology and Professor of Sociology (by courtesy). He was also Director of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, Director for the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect (NDACAN), a position he will continue to hold from Duke, and Associate Vice Provost for the Social Sciences.
Kenneth C. Land, John Franklin Crowell Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology and DUPRI Scholar, is the new Chair-Elect to the American Sociological Association (ASA) Evolution, Biology and Society (EBS) Section. The EBS section is designed to improve dialogue between sociology and the biological sciences. Of particular concern is the interaction between material and social environments with biological processes and evolved predispositions common to all humans.
The 2020 Summer Institute on Computational Social Science (SICSS) held June 22-26, 2020 featured a Panel Discussion on Digital and Computational Demography. Panelists included Nicolò Cavalli (SICSS-Duke 18, SICSS-Oxford 19), Ridhi Kashyap (SICSS-Princeton 17, SICSS-Oxford 19), and Francesco Rampazzo (SICSS-Duke 18).