D. Watson

Synopsis

Born on April 6, 1928, in Chicago, Illinois, James D. Watson worked at the University of Copenhagen and the Cavendish Laboratory before formulating the theory of a double-helix structure for DNA along with Francis Crick. Watson received a 1962 Nobel Prize and went on to do work in cancer research and mapping the human genome. He later came under fire for several controversial remarks on subjects ranging from obesity to race-based intelligence.

Early Years

James Dewey Watson was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 6, 1928, and spent his childhood there, attending Horace Mann Grammar School and South Shore High School before winning a scholarship to the University of Chicago and enrolling at age 15. In 1947, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology and then went on to attend Indiana University in Bloomington, where he received his Ph.D. in zoology in 1950. His Ph.D. thesis was a study of the effect of hard X-rays on bacteriophage multiplication, and he became interested in the work of scientists working at the University of Cambridge with photographic patterns made by X-rays.

Postgraduate Work

At the University of Copenhagen, James D. Watson began his investigation of the structure of DNA, and, in the spring of 1951, he went to the Zoological Station at Naples, where he met Maurice Wilkins and saw for the first time crystalline DNA's X-ray diffraction pattern. That fall, Watson moved his research to the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, where he continued his work with X-rays, learning diffraction techniques. He also met Francis Crick, who shared his interest in puzzling out the structure of DNA. The pair began their historic work soon after.

The Discovery

Crick's and Watson's first serious effort toward learning the structure of DNA came up short, but their second attempt, concluded in the spring of 1953, resulted in the pair putting forth the double-helical configuration, which resembles a twisting ladder. Their model also showed how the DNA molecule could duplicate itself, thus answering one of the constant fundamental questions in the field of genetics. Watson and Crick published their findings in the British journal Nature in April-May 1953 to great acclaim.

Academia and Beyond

In 1955, Watson moved on to Harvard University (1955-76), where he taught biology for 15 years and conducted research. While there, he publishedMolecular Biology of the Gene, which would go on to become one of the most extensively used biology texts.

In 1968, Watson took the reins of the Laboratory of Quantitative Biology at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York, transforming it into a global hub of molecular biology research over the following decades. Continuing his illustrious career, from 1988 to 1992, Watson was one of the directors of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health, where he oversaw the mapping of the genes in the human chromosomes (his own genome was sequenced in 2007, making him the second person to have this done).

As 2007 wore on, however, Watson saw his reputation tarnished by controversial statements he made regarding the intelligence of Africans and assumptions he had made about intellectual differences between geographically separated peoples. These were not the first statements Watson had ever made to raise eyebrows, but they forced him to resign from Cold Spring Harbor. Soon after, he formally announced his retirement.

Over the course of his long career, James D. Watson has been honored numerous times, taking home the John Collins Warren Prize of the Massachusetts General Hospital (1959, with Crick), the Lasker Award (1960, with Crick and Maurice Wilkins) and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1962, with Crick and Wilkins), among others. Additionally, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and the Danish Academy of Arts and Sciences.

biography

Taipei Tower

·         Between 2004-2010, Taipei Tower was considered the tallest building in the world. It is now outranked by the Burj Dubai in Dubai.

·         2. The observation decks are on floors 89 and 91. Taipei 101 houses one of the fastest elevators in the world with a maximum speed of 1,010 meters/minute (55 ft./second). The building houses a total of 61 elevators.

·         3. Design of Taipei 101 (Interior and Exterior) is based on rich Chinese culture. They incorporate Chinese pagoda structure with the shape of Bamboo flowers.

·         4. A 800-metric ton spherical steel mass damper system is located on level 88 to protect the building against typhoons and possible earthquakes. The energy is transferred from the building to the swinging sphere and hence stabilizing the force.

·         5. Taipei 101 is world’s tallest Green Building. TAIPEI 101 has got LEED – EBOM Platinum Certification.

·         6. Taipei MRT station is planned beneath the building in the future and it will be part of Hsinyi line.

·         7.Taipei 101 is one of the few buildings in the world equipped with double-deck elevators.

·         8. Originally, Taipei 101 was planned as 66-floor office tower, to show case the symbol of the new development emerging from Taipei’s financial district.

·         9. The total cost of construction was estimated around $1,600,000,000.

·         10. Taipei 101′s walls are blue-green glass covered and offer UV protection
Tower’s lights display one of seven colours in the spectrum from 6:00 to 10:00 each evening.

taipeiblog

Tulip

·         Currently, there are around 75 wild species of tulips and 150 species in total with over 3000 varieties.

·         The word tulip is derived from a Persian word called delband, which means turban. It is generally believed that it was called this due to the turban-shaped nature of the flower. However, this might have been a translation error as it was fashionable to wear tulips on turbans at the time.

·         Tulips are perennials (a plant that lives for more than 2 years), they bloom in spring, usually for only 3-7 days.

·         Tulips grow from bulbs and being native to mountainous areas the tulip needs a period of cold dormancy, known as vernalization. So they should be planted in the fall (Autumn) and thrive best in climates with cool springs and dry summers.

·         The tulip is usually sweetly scented and depending on the variety it can grow from a few inches to over two feet tall. The flower has a variety of shapes and it comes in most colors although there are no pure blue varieties.

·         Tulips normally have one flower per stem, however a few species have up to 4 flowers on a single stem.

·         Tulips are a part of the lily family.

·         The tulip is native to central Asia and eventually made its way to Turkey. But it was when the flower was first cultivated in the Netherlands that it really came to prominence.

·         The Dutch obsession with tulips began with Flemish botanist Carolus Clusius. When he was made director of Leiden University's new Hortus Botanicus (botanical garden) in 1593 he planted some of his own tulip bulbs. As a result, 1594 is considered the official date of tulips first blooming in Holland.

·         Carolus Clusius was also the first person to identify "broken tulips" which is a viral infection that caused beautiful streaks in the petals. Clusius would go on to create many new color variations of tulips.

·         Tulips started to become highly prized in Holland in the 1600s as some of Clusius unique tulip variations at Leiden became much sought after.

·         This led to a period from 1634 to 1637 known as "Tulip mania" when enthusiasm for the new flower started an economic frenzy and one of the world's first 'speculative bubbles'. The value of tulips shot up nearly overnight, they became the most expensive flower in the world, so expensive that they were treated as a form of currency.

·         At the peak of tulip mania certain bulbs were selling for 10 times more than the annual income of a skilled worker and a valuable tulip bulb could change hands up to ten times in a day. Tulip mania was short-lived though and the whole economy eventually crashed.

·         Today, the Netherlands is still the world's main producer of commercially sold tulips, producing as many as 3 billion bulbs annually, mostly for export.

·         Tulip petals are actually able to be eaten, during the Dutch famine of 1944 in WWII people often had to resort to eating sugar beets and tulips.

·         The tulip is the national flower or Turkey and Afghanistan.

sciencekids

Alexander Fleming

Synopsis

Alexander Fleming was born in Ayrshire, Scotland, on August 6, 1881, and studied medicine, serving as a physician during World War I. Through research and experimentation, Fleming discovered a bacteria-destroying mold which he would call penicillin in 1928, paving the way for the use of antibiotics in modern healthcare. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945 and died on March 11, 1955.

Early Years

Alexander Fleming was born in rural Lochfield, in East Ayrshire, Scotland, on August 6, 1881. His parents, Hugh and Grace were farmers, and Alexander was one of their four children. He also had four half-siblings who were the surviving children from his father Hugh's first marriage. He attended the Louden Moor School, the Darvel School and Kilmarnock Academy before moving to London in 1895, where he lived with his older brother, Thomas Fleming. In London, Fleming finished his basic education at the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster).

Fleming was a member of the Territorial Army, and served from 1900 to 1914 in the London Scottish Regiment. He entered the medical field in 1901, studying at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School at the University of London. While at St. Mary's, he won the 1908 gold medal as the top medical student.

Early Career and World War I

Alexander Fleming had planned to become a surgeon, but a temporary position in the Inoculation Department at St. Mary's Hospital changed his path toward the then-new field of bacteriology. There, he developed his research skills under the guidance of bacteriologist and immunologist Sir Almroth Edward Wright, whose revolutionary ideas of vaccine therapy represented an entirely new direction in medical treatment.

During World War I, Fleming served in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He worked as a bacteriologist, studying wound infections in a makeshift lab that had been set up by Wright in Boulogne, France. Through his research there, Fleming discovered that antiseptics commonly used at the time were doing more harm than good, as their diminishing effects on the body's immunity agents largely outweighed their ability to break down harmful bacteria -- therefore, more soldiers were dying from antiseptic treatment than from the infections they were trying to destroy. Fleming recommended that, for more effective healing, wounds simply be kept dry and clean. However, his recommendations largely went unheeded.

Returning to St. Mary's after the war, in 1918, Fleming took on a new position: assistant director of St. Mary's Inoculation Department. (He would become a professor of bacteriology at the University of London in 1928, and an emeritus professor of bacteriology in 1948.)

In November 1921, while nursing a cold, Fleming discovered lysozyme, a mildly antiseptic enzyme present in body fluids, when a drop of mucus dripped from his nose onto a culture of bacteria. Thinking that his mucus might have some kind of effect on bacterial growth, he mixed it with the culture. A few weeks later, he observed that the bacteria had been dissolved. This marked Fleming's first great discovery, as well as a significant contribution to human immune system research. (As it turned out, however, lysozyme had no effect on the most destructive bacteria.)

The Road to Penicillin

In September 1928, Fleming returned to his laboratory after a month away with his family, and noticed that a culture of Staphylococcus aureus he had left out had become contaminated with a mold (later identified as Penicillium notatum). He also discovered that the colonies of staphylococci surrounding this mold had been destroyed.

He later said of the incident, "When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn't plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I suppose that was exactly what I did." He at first called the substance "mold juice," and then named it "penicillin," after the mold that produced it.

Thinking he had found an enzyme more powerful than lysozyme, Fleming decided to investigate further. What he found out, though, was that it was not an enzyme at all, but an antibiotic -- one of the first antibiotics to be discovered. Further development of the substance was not a one-man operation, as his previous efforts had been, so Fleming recruited two young researchers. The three men unfortunately failed to stabilize and purify penicillin, but Fleming pointed out that penicillin had clinical potential, both in topical and injectable forms, if it could be developed properly.

On the heels of Fleming's discovery, a team of scientists from the University of Oxford -- led by Howard Florey and his co-worker, Ernst Chain -- isolated and purified penicillin. The antibiotic eventually came into use during World War II, revolutionizing battlefield medicine and, on a much broader scale, the field of infection control.

Florey, Chain and Fleming shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, but their relationship was tainted over who should receive the most credit for penicillin. The press tended to emphasize Fleming's role due to the compelling back-story of his chance discovery and his greater willingness to be interviewed.

Later Years and Honors

In 1946, Fleming succeeded Almroth Edward Wright as head of St. Mary's Inoculation Department, which was renamed the Wright-Fleming Institute. Additionally, Fleming served as president of the Society for General Microbiology, a member of the Pontifical Academy of Science, and an honorary member of nearly every medical and scientific society in the world.

Outside of the scientific community, Fleming was named rector of Edinburgh University from 1951 to 1954, freeman of many municipalities, and Honorary Chief Doy-gei-tau of the American Indian Kiowa tribe. He was also awarded honorary doctorate degrees from nearly 30 European and American universities.

Fleming died of a heart attack on March 11, 1955, at his home in London, England. He was survived by his second wife, Dr. Amalia Koutsouri-Vourekas, and his only child, Robert, from his first marriage.

biography