News Briefs

Policy set for make-up classes after Isabel

The University set forth a policy Monday for the rescheduling of classes and labs canceled due to Hurricane Isabel. The policy, as explained in an e-mail to the faculty of Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, the Pratt School of Engineering and the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, holds that faculty members themselves are in the best position to determine whether a make-up session is needed or whether the work can be incorporated into the remaining regularly scheduled class and lab periods.

Med Center receives $8M grant to study asthma
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has awarded $8 million to researchers at the Duke University Medical Center for a five-year program that will study the multiple genetic risk factors that predispose patients to environmental asthma.
Dr. David Schwartz, principal investigator of the new program, said that knowledge of the genetic basis of the chronic airway disease could be used to develop and test new drugs targeted to particular forms of asthma, such as those associated with exposure to allergens or environmental irritants like ozone.
Under the new program, Duke researchers will use a new technique called gene expression profiling to identify which genes are involved when the airways of asthma patients become obstructed or inflamed. The program will also probe the lung's response to ozone in patients with and without asthma and will study how shifts in the metabolism of nitric oxide may affect asthma.