C60+ in space – a 28-year detective story about the Diffuse Interstellar Bands – Part 5
It seems likely that C60+ will act as a stable site for a wide variety of adducts and that these entities will contribute to the Diffuse Interstellar Bands. John Maier's group in Basel is looking for species like C60(Fe)+.
More details | Watch nowIan McKellen @ Florida State University – 2009
Ian McKellen speaks at FSU about his acting career and some of the fascinating things that he has learned through theater and personal experience.
More details | Watch nowIdeas Come from Many Places
Come share with me the memories of where ideas have come from during my life - from childhood to old age. You may find it helpful in encouraging your own brains to come up with new ideas. They won't all be useful - as I have found in this case of min....
More details | Watch nowThe Discovery of Helicobacter
Before the 1970s, well fixed specimens of gastric mucosa were rare. Then the flexible endoscope was introduced. This enabled gastroenterologists to take numerous well-fixed small biopsies from the stomach. Gastric histology and pathology were clearly....
More details | Watch nowTelomeres: Telling Tails
Telomeres protect chromosome ends and help stabilize the genome. Throughout human life and in aging, telomeres often erode down, eventually causing cells to malfunction or die. The highly regulated cellular enzyme telomerase adds telomeric DNA to tel....
More details | Watch nowThe Killer Defence
Immune surveillance by virus-specific CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs), or killer T cells, has long been known to be central to the control of acute infections and some cancers, though the role of CTL memory in the rapid recall of immune protectio....
More details | Watch nowMinimizing a Bacterial Genome by Global Design and Synthesis
In 2010, we chemically synthesized the 1078 Kb Mycoplasma mycoides genome and transplanted it into a recipient cell cytoplasm to create a 'synthetic cell', JCVI-syn1.0 (Science, 329, 52-56, 2010). We identified several hundred non-essential genes by ....
More details | Watch nowRole of Nitric Oxide and Cyclic GMP in Cell Signaling and Drug Development
Nitric oxide research has grown rapidly with about 150,000 research publications describing its biological effects. It is an important messenger molecule that affects most tissues and biological processes. Many effects of nitric oxide are mediated by....
More details | Watch nowIon Channels: Their Discovery, their Function and their Role in Diseases
The concept of bioelectricity emerged in the late 18th century, based on the experiments of Galvani and Volta. Sixty years ago, Hodgkin and Huxley showed that the nerve impulse is a result of permeability changes of the nerve membrane. This raised th....
More details | Watch nowThe Origins of Cellular Life
The complexity of modern biological life has long made it difficult to understand how life could emerge spontaneously from the chemistry of the early earth. We are attempting to synthesize simple artificial cells in order to discover plausible pathwa....
More details | Watch nowThe Origin of Reversible Protein Phosphorylation as a Regulatory Mechanism
Reversible protein phosphorylation can be considered one of the most prevalent mechanism by which eukaryotic cellular events are regulated. It is directly involved in numerous pathological conditions, and bacterial and viral diseases. This process wa....
More details | Watch nowThe Adventure of Cold Atoms. From Optical Pumping to Quantum Gases
Conservation laws are very important in quantum physics. Two examples of applications will be given. First, optical pumping which uses transfer of angular momentum from polarized photons to atoms to produce highly polarized atomic gases. Then, laser ....
More details | Watch nowA Crime against Humanity
When Monsanto first tried to introduce GMO seeds into Europe there was a backlash by the Green parties and their political allies, who feared that American agro-business was about to take over their food supply. Thus began a massive campaign not agai....
More details | Watch nowFinding Mutations that Affect Immunity
Beginning with an exception to normal function caused by a genetic aberration, one may hope to find at least one protein with non-redundant function in a certain biological process. This approach permitted the identification of the receptor for bacte....
More details | Watch nowInsight into the Laws of Nature for Biological Evolution
Both evolutionary biology and genetics have their roots 150 years ago in work with phenotypic variants of plants and animals. In contrast, microbial genetics originating as recently as the 1940s, rapidly revealed that filamentous DNA molecules are th....
More details | Watch nowFrom Proto-oncogenes to Precision Oncology
The diagnosis, classification, and treatment of human cancers are being transformed by scientific discoveries that were strongly influenced by the discovery of the c-src proto-oncogene, as described in the lecture by Michael Bishop. The path to this ....
More details | Watch nowThe State of the Universe
Our Universe was created in 'The Big Bang' and has been expanding ever since. Brian Schmidt describe the vital statistics of the Universe, including its size, weight, shape, age, and composition. He also tries to make sense of the Universe's past, pr....
More details | Watch nowA New Kilogram in 2018: The Biggest Revolution in Metrology Since the French Revolution
Metrology - the science of measurements - is responsible for the international uniformity and precision in standards. Today, the seven units for meter, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole, and candela of our international system of units (SI units....
More details | Watch nowWhat About Redefining Time Using a Stable Laser?
Several laser-based Atomic Clocks now have an accuracy potential of ~2 x10-18, a hundred-fold better than the best achieved after more than 60 years' experience with rf resonances in Cs atoms. Still, this long attention span documents that the Cs Fou....
More details | Watch nowGlobal Warming Revisited
Because of the following statement from the American Physical Society: “The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, s....
More details | Watch nowCosmic Microwave Background Radiation and its Role in Cosmology
In the first half of the 20th century other galaxies were recognized, their red shift measured and theories of the whole universe were developed. They included Big Bang and Steady State. Arno Penzias and I found the Cosmic Microwave Radiation (CMB) i....
More details | Watch nowThe Future of Particle Physics
Elementary Particle Physics seeks to discover the basic constituents of matter and understand the fundamental forces that act on them. In this lecture I shall review the current state of particle physics, the grand success of the ñstandard modelî, ....
More details | Watch nowA Random Walk in Science
I will discuss my random walk in science, from my graduate student on postdoctoral years testing the Weinberg-Salam-Glashow theory of electro-weak forces, and then to energy transfer in condensed matter systems, the spectroscopy of positronium, laser....
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