Author: Qiong Wang

  • Twenty-four visits to Stockholm: a concise history of the Rockefeller Nobel Prizes

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    Part XXII: Roderick MacKinnon, 2003 Prize in Chemistry Joseph Luna In the early 1950s, two English physiologists named Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley wrote a five-part magnum opus of papers formally describing the electrochemical basis of action potentials, those short lasting impulses that travel along nerve cells. Starting with electrophysiological measurements of squid giant axons,…

  • Culture Corner

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    Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism and the 2016 Presidential Election Bernie Langs I am close to finishing a masterpiece of historical and philosophical discussion written by Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975), The Origins of Totalitarianism. My purpose in writing about this book is not to convince anyone to read it, because it is an…

  • For Your Consideration – Ones to Watch, Vol. 2 Edition

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    Jim Keller The storm of film festivals galore began at summer’s end with the one-two punch of the Venice (August 31 – September 10) and Telluride (September 2-5) film festivals. In recent years the former has been credited with birthing our eventual Best Picture winner into the world and so begins the Oscar race. In…

  • New York-ese, or a Guide to the New York City Dialect

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    Aileen Marshall People come to New York City for different reasons. Many come as tourists, others come to live and work here, not only from other parts of the United States, but from every corner of the globe. American citizens study standard American English in school. Visitors from other countries usually learn British English. Then…

  • QUOTABLE QUOTE

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    It is no easy task to be good. Anyone can act: get angry, give money, speak to friends, and so on. But to do something to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not easy. (Aristotle, 384 – 322)

  • Second Monday in October

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    GEORGE BARANY AND MARTIN ABRESCH George Barany is a Rockefeller alum (1977) currently on the Chemistry faculty of the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. Martin Abresch is a graduate of the University of Wyoming, currently living in Seattle, and this is his first published puzzle.  For more information, including a link to the answer, visit here.…

  • Life on a Roll

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    Qiong Wang One amazing thing about New York City is that it is never the same experience whenever you step out onto the streets. You will always witness different details, even if you are walking on the same street, at a different time of the day, on different days of the week, and in different…

  • Cover page

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  • Political Science

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    Paul Jeng July was an exhausting month for anyone paying attention to the current presidential election. Like many other Americans, I lived the weeks surrounding the Republican and Democratic National Conventions as a news addict trapped in a cycle of abuse — cramming nearly every spare weekday hour with analysis, op-eds, and internet commentary, crashing…

  • The Science of Brexit

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    Johannes Buheitel David Cameron looked tired but determined, as he took on the short walk from his front door to the podium opposite a battery of journalists that had congregated in front of London’s 10 Downing Street. On June 24, England’s Prime Minister announced that he will be stepping down from his post October as…

  • How the approval of the “Against Mass Immigration” initiative threatens science in Switzerland

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    Juliette Wipf Over the last decade, nationalist and anti-immigration parties have gained voters throughout Europe (Front National, Golden Dawn, Alternative für Deutschland, Lega Nord, and many more). Brexit is not the first case where citizens have decided in favor of legislation that jeopardizes international academic cooperation. In Switzerland, scientific collaborations are at stake after the…

  • Twenty-four visits to Stockholm: a concise history of the Rockefeller Nobel Prizes

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    Part XXI: Paul Nurse, 2001 Prize in Physiology or Medicine Joseph Luna All cells, in the end, are copies of copies. But unlike the loss of quality in the Xerox sense of making a copy, a cell needs to be perfect. It must faithfully and exactly duplicate its genetic information, gather extra membranes, energy and…