Category: Science and Society

  • Zika Virus

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    By Aileen Marshall What should you know about the Zika virus? It’s been around for over 50 years, but it’s only recently that it’s spread has increased around the world, especially in South America. The Zika virus is spread by mosquitoes, but for most people it only causes a mild infection. However, an infection in…

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

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    Part XVI: David Baltimore, 1975 Prize in Physiology or Medicine. By Joseph Luna On June 19th 1946, a captive rhesus monkey in the Mengo district near the town of Entebbe, Uganda developed unexplained hind-limb paralysis. British and American scientists, part of the local Yellow Fever Research Institute, financed in part by The Rockefeller Foundation, soon…

  • Martin Shkreli: Disease or Symptom?

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    By Sarala Kal Hillary Clinton said “he was like the worst bad date you can imagine,” and many others call him the villain of the pharmaceutical industry. Thirty-two-year-old Martin Shkreli is a Brooklyn native, whose placement in a high school program for gifted youth serendipitously landed him an internship on Wall Street at the ripe…

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

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    Part XV: Christian de Duve, 1974 Prize in Physiology or Medicine. By Joseph Luna In his two-volume book A Guided Tour of the Living Cell, Christian de Duve vividly describes a most hostile setting, where “everywhere we look are scenes of destruction: maimed molecules of various kinds, shapeless debris, half-recognizable pieces of bacteria and viruses,…

  • Wasting Our Food

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    By Guadalupe Astorga More than 40% of the food in the United States ends up in the trash can. This is huge, and includes sea-food, meat, cereals fruits and vegetables, as well as dairy products. Surprisingly, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that for all categories, food waste is not primarily the result of…

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

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    Part XIV: George E. Palade, 1974 Prize in Physiology or Medicine. By Joseph Luna Nestled in the 3rd sub-basement of Smith Hall, around 1953, an electron microscope (EM) is briefly idle. The machine, an RCA model EMU-2A, resembles a spare part from some future space station: a long vertical steel tube adorned with studs and…

  • Digging Into That Juicy and Tasty Steak…

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    Some Valuable Facts about Meat     By Guadalupe Astorga This October 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared red meat and its processed derivatives a threat to human health, namely for its carcinogenic risk. Twenty-two experts from ten countries in the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded that processed meat is “carcinogenic to humans”…

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

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    Part XIII: Albert Claude, 1974 Prize in Physiology or Medicine. By Joseph Luna On December 7, 1970, the moon-bound crew of the final Apollo mission swiveled their camera toward earth, some 28,000 miles distant, and took a picture. Three weeks later the resulting photograph revealed a delicate blue orb suspended in space, painted with swirling…

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

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    Part XII: Stanford Moore and William Stein, 1972 Prize in Chemistry By Joseph Luna “RNAse-free.” To most any molecular biologist working with RNA, these two seemingly unrelated words are as sweet sounding together as “passion-fruit.” This is because ribonucleases, those small hardy enzymes that chew up RNA, can be found everywhere, are more invasive than…

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

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    Part XI: Gerald M. Edelman, 1972 Prize in Physiology or Medicine By Joseph Luna To be immune is to be exempt. In the late 19th century, a physician named Paul Ehrlich gave a death-defying example of such an exemption by giving mice sub-lethal quantities of the deadly toxin ricin. Over time, these mice developed a…

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

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    Part X: H. Keffer Hartline, 1967 Prize in Physiology or Medicine By Joseph Luna While strolling along a beach one day in the summer of 1926, a young physiologist named Haldan Keffer Hartline came across a living fossil. Before him was a horseshoe crab, Limulus polyphemus, with its domed carapace shell, spiked rudder tail and…

  • Alfred Nobel and the Prizes

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    By Susan Russo Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1833. He is best remembered for the invention of dynamite and for leaving the major part of his fortune for the establishment of prizes for a person or persons who accomplished discoveries resulting in the “greatest benefit on mankind.” Nobel’s father was an engineer, manufacturer,…