Diversity and the Duke BME PhD Program: Then, Now and Moving Forward

Hilbert’s Program Then and Now

Hilbert’s program was an ambitious and wide-ranging project in the philosophy and foundations of mathematics. In order to “dispose of the foundational questions in mathematics once and for all,” Hilbert proposed a two-pronged approach in 1921: first, classical mathematics should be formalized in axiomatic systems; second, using only restricted, “finitary” means, one should give proofs of the co...

The Perceived Values of Diversity, Then and Now

In the Footsteps of Vavilov: Plant Diversity Then and Now

N.I. Vavilov’s theories direct present-day global activities in plant science, breeding, and conservation. His expeditions around the world located centers of diversity of crop evolution. Vavilov was one of the earliest scientists to realize that wild genetic diversity could be lost, through genetic erosion, reducing the possibilities for future crop improvement. To measure genetic erosion, Gar...

Schizophrenia: Then and Now

EPS—Then and Now

"Slime" played a brief and spectacular role in the 19th century founded by the theory of primordial slime by Ernst Haeckel. However, that substance was never found and eventually abandoned. Further scientific attention slowly began in the 1930s referring to slime as a microbial product and then was inspired by "How bacteria stick" by Costerton et al. in 1978, and the matrix material was conside...