Author: Qiong Wang

  • Life on a Roll

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    Shaoxing—the Venice in the East Qiong Wang During my recent trip to China, Shaoxing was a pleasant surprise. The city sits nicely over a complex water canal system, woven together by stone bridges. Until today, local residents inside the old town often used canal water for their daily life activities. Just like Venice, man-powered gondolas…

  • October Cover

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  • 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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