The view from East Congo

A local elected leader of displaced Congolese. Photo by Bruce Knauft.

Anthropologist Bruce Knauft, director of the States at Regional Risk Project, writes in Emory Report:

This spring, I had the privilege to visit once again the eastern Congo, a region that has suffered the greatest loss of life in the world from human-caused disaster — about 5.5 million persons — since World War II.

In the wake of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, large-scale loss of life in the Great Lakes region has now become concentrated primarily in one country — the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But the conflict that informs this catastrophe is regional and even global. It has even been described as “the first African world war,” as so many countries have been involved.

An important and troubling aspect of this conflict is not only that it has dragged on for years but that it combines dramatic, violent atrocities with a numbing drumbeat of lives lost due to famine, destruction of crops, livestock, homes, and lack of health and humanitarian services. Armed groups and militias render populous parts of rural East Congo insecure and effectively unreachable for services or aid by humanitarian organizations and the United Nations, much less the Congolese government.

Read more.

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Learning morality from monkeys

"I'm very interested in the origin of morality," says psychologist Frans de Waal, director of the Yerkes Living Links Center, who studies primates for clues to human evolution. De Waal advocates the theory of Scottish philosopher David Hume, that human morality grew out of moral sentiments, instead of a rational process.

"I believe very strongly that actually (our morality) came out of our psychology, and our psychology is a primate psychology," de Waal says. "In primates you can see many of these same tendencies, you see empathy and sympathy. You see reciprocity and retribution. You see rules that are reinforced, and they beat up someone who doesn't follow the rules."

Movies go under the microscope

What do Dustin Hoffman, Secretary of Energy Steve Chu and physicist Sidney Perkowitz have in common?

They are all on the advisory board of the Science and Entertainment Exchange, a new National Academy of Sciences program that aims to make mass entertainment more scientifically accurate.

"Scientists have strong feelings about how their profession is portrayed, and they should. The way science is handled in movies can have a major impact," says Perkowitz, Candler Professor of Physics and author of "Hollywood Science: Movies, Science and the End of the World."

Read more about the exchange in the San Diego Union article: "Scientific accuracy in movies? It's neither universal nor paramount."

What's your favorite science-fiction flick? Is it realistic?

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A biochemical path to solar energy

Can microbes that live in swamp mud help us produce green energy?

Chemistry Professor Brian Dyer is researching that possibility, through his work at the intersection of chemistry, physics and biology. Early in his career, he began working with proteins that can do photochemistry, drawing his inspiration from natural photosynthesis.

“Ultimately, plants are taking light and storing it as chemical energy,” Dyer explains. “The elegance of some of these reactions is astounding. It’s an incredibly complex process, done with a series of proteins that are highly optimized for a specific function, such as light harvesting and water oxidation. The proteins are like tiny machines. A good analogy is an internal combustion engine, where you actually have integrated, working parts.”

He wants to covert solar energy to fuel, using a particular protein to develop a photocatalyst for solar hydrogen production — which brings up the swamp bugs.

Read more.

TV got this physicist into films

Many great scientists will tell you that a favorite teacher first influenced their career path. But for Connie Roth, it was the television show "MacGyver." The title character was a secret agent who carried a Swiss Army knife instead of a gun and relied on ingenuity to escape predicaments.

"It was an appealing premise to a teenager, that if you understand enough about how things work, you can put things together to solve problems. That's kind of what a scientist does," says Roth, assistant professor of physics.

Her lab uses both physics and chemistry to explore the dynamics of polymer molecules, including within thin films. Polymer films have a range of industrial uses, such as anti-reflective coatings for eyeglasses, membranes for gas separation processes and electrolyte layers for lithium batteries.

Read Roth's profile in Emory Report.