An Unproven Theorem

Gravitational wave detection wins physics Nobel Davide Castelvecchi 03 October 2017  (https://www.nature.com/news/gravitational-wave-detection-wins-physics-nobel-1.22737?WT.ec_id=NEWSDAILY-20171003)  Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne share the 2017 prize for their work at LIGO to detect ripples in space-time. Three physicists who had leading roles in the first direct detection of gravitational waves have won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. Rainer Weiss, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge and Barry Barish and Kip Thorne, both at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, share the 9 million Swedish krona (US$1.1-million) award for their work at the US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). In September 2015, LIGO picked up the deformations in space-time caused by the collision of two distant black holes. That discovery, which was  announced in February 2016 , opened up a new...

Nobel In Medicine Awarded To 3 Scientists For Work On Circadian Rhythm Three American researchers have been awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in medicine “for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm”, or the biological clock. The 9 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million) award will shared by Jeffrey Hall of the University of Maine, Michael Rosbash of Brandeis University in Massachusetts and Michael Young of Rockefeller University in New York. Their work helped illuminate one of the central mysteries of human life: why we need sleep, and how it happens. They were given their award for understanding the mysteries of how life tracks time and changes itself according to the movement of the sun. The researchers had isolated a gene in fruit flies that controls the daily biological rhythm. They were able to show how the gene encodes a protein that builds up in cells at night, but then degrades during the day. The researchers also identified other prot...

RESEARCHERS FROM HUMAN LONGEVITY, INC. USE WHOLE GENOME SEQUENCE DATA AND MACHINE LEARNING TO IDENTIFY INDIVIDUALS THROUGH FACE AND OTHER PHYSICAL TRAIT PREDICTION (SAN DIEGO, CA)—September 5, 2017—Researchers from Human Longevity, Inc. (HLI) have published a study in which individual faces and other physical traits were predicted using whole genome sequencing data and machine learning. This work, from lead author Christoph Lippert, Ph.D. and senior author J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., was published in the journal  Proceedings from the National Academy of Sciences  (PNAS). The authors believe that, while the study offers novel approaches for forensics, the work has serious implications for data privacy, deidentification and adequately informed consent. The team concludes that much more public deliberation is needed as more and more genomes are generated and placed in public databases. For the IRB approved study, 1,061 ethnically diverse people ranging in age from 18 to 82...

The Dark Scientist ever!!! The Disgraceful Episode Of Lysenkoism Brings Us Global Warming Theory By Peter Ferrara ( www.forbes.com) https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/04/28/the-disgraceful-episode-of-lysenkoism-brings-us-global-warming-theory/#601ed5d27ac8 Trofim Lysenko became the Director of the Soviet Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences in the 1930s under Josef Stalin.  He was an advocate of the theory that characteristics acquired by plants during their lives could be inherited by later generations stemming from the changed plants, which sharply contradicted Mendelian genetics.  As a result, Lysenko became a fierce critic of theories of the then rising modern genetics. Under Lysenko’s view, for example, grafting branches of one plant species onto another could create new plant hybrids that would be perpetuated by the descendants of the grafted plant.  Or modifications made to seeds would be inherited by l...

An Interesting read !!! Sambar, an Indian Dish Prevents the Development of Dimethyl Hydrazine (DMH) -Induced Colon Cancer: A Preclinical Study. Prasad VG, Reddy N, Francis A, Nayak PG, Kishore A, Nandakumar K, Rao MC, Shenoy R. Pharmacogn Mag . 2016 Jul; 12(Suppl 4): S441–S445. doi:   10.4103/0973-1296.191454 Abstract BACKGROUND: Colon cancer (CC) is the third commonly diagnosed cancer and the second leading cause of mortality in the US when compared to India where prevalence is less. Possible reason could be the vegetarian diet comprising spices used in curry powders. Researchers believe that 70% of the cases are associated with diet. Spices have inherited a rich tradition for their flavor and medicinal properties. Researchers have been oriented towards spices present in food items for their antitumorigenic properties. OBJECTIVE: We investigated the effects of sambar as a preventive measure for 1,2-di...

VS Ramachandran: The Marco Polo of neuroscience V ilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran is not a name that rolls off the tongue, even in its more common abbreviated form of VS Ramachandran. Perhaps this is the reason its owner is not as well known by the general public as his fellow neurologist and friend Oliver Sacks. But within the sciences he is seen as one of the great pioneers of our time. In an often-quoted description, Richard Dawkins once wrote: "Ramachandran is a latterday Marco Polo, journeying the Silk Road of science to strange and exotic Cathays of the mind." Such is his reputation for pushing back the boundaries of neuroscience that  Newsweek  magazine identified him among the "100 most prominent people to watch" in the 21st century. Lose yourself in a great story: Sign up for the long read email   Read more The former Cambridge PhD student has also been feted in Britain, giving the Reith lectures in 2003, gaining fellow...

Shared from www.sciencemag.org The frustrated science student behind Sci-hub By  John Bohannon Beyond being the founder of  Sci-Hub, the world’s largest pirate site for academic papers , and risking arrest as a result, Alexandra Elbakyan is a typical science graduate student: idealistic, hard-working, and relatively poor. In 1988, when Elbakyan was born in Kazakhstan, the Soviet Union was just beginning to crumble. Books about dinosaurs and evolution fascinated her early on. “I also remember reading Soviet science books that provided scientific explanations for miraculous events thought previously to be produced by gods or magic.” She was hooked. At university in the Kazakh capital, she discovered a knack for computer hacking. It appealed to her because “unlike higher programming languages that are created by people and are volatile,” making and breaking computer security systems requires a deeper knowledge of mathematics and the primitive “assembly lang...